‘Suck, squeeze, bang, blow’ is what we’ve come to know. We’re told the internal combustion engine is in its final days, and surely at this point, there’s nobody looking to innovate further on the near-universally used four-stroke systems found in cars, right? Well, Porsche might have other ideas.
It has recently filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a six-stroke combustion engine that, simply put, changes things to ‘suck, squeeze, bang, squeeze, bang, blow.’
Technically speaking, the patent is filed as a “method for a combustion machine with two times three strokes” and comes with a few handy diagrams that, admittedly, are more than this author is intelligent enough to process fully but make for some interesting investigating.
It reveals a system that has a crankshaft which rotates inside a ring on planetary gears. As that spins away and alternates the centre point of rotation, it effectively lowers the travel of the pistons for the added strokes – meaning two different bottom and top-dead centres – and offers variable compressions.
What that means is the potential for an engine that can produce power more efficiently, which would come in particularly handy in downsizing performance car power units in an ever-more eco-conscious world. That, or just offering up more bang-for-buck from larger-capacity units.
Now, we have no real indication if Porsche actually intends to put a six-stroke engine into production or if this is simply protecting an idea one of its engineers has had, but it’s an intriguing thought either way.
Porsche 911 Carrera 992.2, rear
That said, it’s still not the maddest engine patent we’ve seen this year. That one goes to Ferrari and its upside-down, twin-supercharged hydrogen-burning straight-six. We suspect that one is even less likely to make reality but, in a world where batteries and motors are seemingly the defacto choice going forward, we’re delighted some people much smarter than us are still thinking about real engines.
