Here’s the audio of my appearance yesterday on Shaun Thompson’s show in Illinois. We talked about how your car is mining your data and also Occasional Use Vehicles – that is to say, “EVs”:
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Hey Eric,
Have you seen this? New engine from Cummins in 2026. Looks like a mild hybrid that will offer gas, diesel and other fuels versions. They seem proud to have reduced emission by more that what the government is requiring too. hmmmmmm
https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2023/02/13/cummins-announces-new-x10-engine-next-fuel-agnostic-series-launching-north
I think some maybe some engine builders are realizing that ICE isn’t dead yet.
No, but they are adding complexity to their existing engines. It’s disgusting, really.
I worked at Thomas Built Buses from 1997-2001. Sometime in 2000 or 2001, I was invited to a meeting with Caterpillar. I was nothing but a lowly electrical engineer who integrated their systems into our buses. It was a simple job, really, but at the meeting they were discussing what changes we had to make to accommodate their new engines for 2002 and 2004. Apparently, exhaust modifications would be made to incorporate catalytic converters. Their fancy term was selective catalytic reduction. Down the road, to accommodate tightening NOX requirements for Tier 2 bin5 emissions standards, it would also involve pouring bottled cat piss in the converter to further speed the process and reduce nox. The other thing that they would have on their engines were air pumps to reduce exhaust temperatures since NOX levels increase with temperatures. My answer is who cares. The list went on and on.
I told the people at the meeting that it would be less costly to their company for them to hire a bunch of lobbyists to lobby congress and also to wine and dine the EPA instead of developing these complex systems to “comply with the mandates.” He stated that they had not choice and that it was company policy. I said, change your policy or you will be out of business. Their exhaust system modifications alone would be onoruous for us to complete.
In any case, I told them they would be out of business if they continued down that path. Caterpillar decided not to pursue the on highway diesel market in 2009. The other predatory monopolies like detroit and cummins continue along kissing the governments ass and billing the customer.
The cost of school bus engine rose from around 9k in 1998 to 20k by the time I left.
There’s a lesson to be learned there somewhere
Interesting ‘Inside Baseball’ there.
Whenever I hear the phrase catalytic converters I instantly think of a gear head I knew in the ’80’s who called them, “catastrophic perverters”.
I didn’t know at the time how right he was.
background: I was hired to handle the “98 Engines” which were the first electronic managed engines sold in the US. The reason they hired me was that I was familiar with fuel injection and how to integrate it with other systems on the bus. It wasn’t too hard, but I was at the right place at the right time. I miss those early days of actually working to improve a product.