Mazda Rx8 owners can the rotary engine be improved or is this the best we will ever see in mass production? : Eco Answers

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Question by mark_hensley@sbcglobal.net: Mazda Rx8 owners can the rotary engine be improved or is this the best we will ever see in mass production?
What can or will be done to improve low end “go power”? Do you think Mazda will consider a hybrid electric rotary power-train. Certainly, this would improve gas mileage, grunt and maybe reduce a few quirks. What do you think?

Best answer:

Answer by cnshinn
Rotary engines in naturally-aspirated form do not produce huge amounts of torque.

If you remember (or have taken yet) your high school physics you’ll remember that torque is a function of Force x the length of the Moment-Arm (distance of where the force is applied vs. its pivot point).

The size of the rotor is small, giving you a short Moment-Arm and therefore low torque. But due to the very high-revving nature of the rotary engine you can still achieve quite high horsepower numbers because HP is a function of Torque x RPM.

Turbo or Super-Charging a rotary engine increases Torque and HP dramatically, so you can investigate these (expensive) options. It’s doubtful you’ll ever see these come from Mazda again as making Rotary engines meet emissions standards is tough enough already.

I don’t think Mazda has tried looking at Hybrid technology for the rotary yet, but they have done a lot of testing of Hydrogen powered rotary’s. Try Googling that. There are several test fleets in Japan and Sweden/Finland.

Future improvements: Google “16X”. Mazda has plans to produce a larger rotary engine, a 1.6 liter Direct Injection version. Torque, HP, and fuel economy are all supposed to be much improved.

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Mazda Rx8 owners can the rotary engine be improved or is this the best we will ever see in mass production?

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