I have heard a commercial a few times about a production hybrid car that uses any fuel, ‘even those to be used in the future’. There were no details about it however, just some green statements.
I do know, or have heard, that a diesel type engine where fuel is injected during combustion (as opposed to being drawn in during the intake) could be modified to use a variety of fuels, perhaps that was what the commercial was referring to.
That’s how all diesel engines work: they take in air during the intake stroke, use high compression to raise the temperature of the air so that fuel will ignite, then inject fuel into the cylinder over the course of the ignition stroke.
As for the claim that some type of engine will be able to run on many types of fuel, even those developed in the future - it’s so non-specific that it’s hard to evaluate. One can modify current engines to operate on different fuels - for example, diesel engines can be made to run on used French fry oil, and gasoline engines can be made to run on ethanol or methane.
Is the claim that someone will develop an engine that, without modification. can run on many different types of fuel? While this seems possible, I wouldn’t expect such an engine to run as well on any type of fuel as would an engine designed specifically for that fuel. Every fuel has characteristics such as combustion point, viscosity, combustion by-products, etc. An engine designer who knows the fuel in advance can design for these characteristics.
Its not that hard to see why they wouldn’t bother with the diesel in the US; diesel is more expensive than gas in the US, while due to differences in taxation, diesel is a fair bit cheaper cheaper than gasoline in many European countries. For example, in France, at current exchange rates, diesel is ~$7.14 a gallon, while gas is $8.88 a gallon. That makes the payback time a lot quicker for the more expensive diesel engine car.
And that is before the added cost to comply with US emissions laws. For example current EU standards allow a diesel car to emit 0.18 grams of NOx per kilometer, Cite, while in the US, a Bin 8 vehicle can only produce 0.14 grams per MILE, which is 0.87 g/km.
The ad for a “future proof” hybrid is for the Lexus LS 600h. For the life of me, I have no idea what they’re talking about and can’t find any real facts online. Their ad says they’ve created “technology that can optimize any fuel, even fuels of the future.”
Well, if you study hybrids and learn how to make one that runs on a battery X amount of time, your technology probably could apply to any fuel. I think that’s all they mean, they have the ability to make hybrids so when we start running cars on used socks, they’ll make a hybrid for that.
For what it’s worth, the LS 600 costs over $100k and has a 5.0 V8 hybrid that gets… (wait for these amazing numbers)… 21 MPG!
Multifuelengines have been around for a while, mostly for military use. There are significant design issues to getting them to work efficiently with different types of fuel, and the military solution is usually to make major adjustments to the engine setup when switching fuel types. It’s not just a matter of filling the tank with diesel instead of gasoline.