Mazda Smart Idle

Mazda has apparently cooked up an idle-stop feature for internal combustion automo-cars that uses some sort of direct fuel injection to quickly restart the engine.

Why am I writing about car engines, you ask?

Well, here's why:

Until now, this technology has only been available in hybrids, meaing that its introduction to the rest of the auto world will make standard gasloine-powered cars much more fuel efficient.

Now, if you have any knowledge of hybrids, you'll know that the ability to kill the gasoline-powered engine during idle is one of the key features in extending fuel economy. In a hybrid, the vehicle's electric powerplant handles most of the work at low speeds and idle, while the engine is either relegated to recharging the batteries, or simply shut off all together. When the engine is needed again, for either highway driving or when the batteries start running low, the stored charge in the electric powerplant juices up the starter and boom; smoggy days are here again!

Until now, these quick and frequent restarts were only feasible on a hybrid - the only internal combustion cars that could do this carried a prohibitvely expensive dedicated powersource - but Mazda seems to have figured a way around this using the aformentioned direct fuel injection.

I know precisely dick about how engines work (ok, well, not quite dick. I get the general concepts and understand the basic science behind it, but I couldn't fix and /or build one to save my life), so I won't try to explain exactly how this new breakthrough works. If you want to know more, head on over to Green Car Congress or TreeHugger. I jacked this from them.