At Razão Automóvel, we believe that despite all the technological evolutions in electric vehicles, the combustion engine will remain with us for many years to come. Technological evolution has raised our “beloved” combustion engine to levels of efficiency and performance that until recently were unthinkable.
Electronically controlled valves, engines with variable compression ratio, gasoline ignition by compression, and water injection system these are just three examples of technologies that demonstrate that we have not yet reached the limit of evolution of this 100-year-old technology.
But it is this latest technology — the water injection system — that at this moment appears to be the closest to massification. Not only because it is at a higher stage of evolution, but also because it has a lower degree of complexity.
To show how this system works, Bosch has just released a video where you can watch all the operating phases of this pioneering system:
As mentioned above, the injection of water into the combustion chamber allows for efficiency gains of around 13%, due to the reduction in the temperature of the rich gases in the combustion chamber.
Update (January 11, 2019): Jason Fenske of the YouTube Engineering Explained channel also goes into this topic, going into more detail about the functioning of the water injection system present in the BMW M4 GTS. Watch the video.