Dis may be da greatest idea since dey put gravy on da fries. Dis could make da cars more reliable with less of dat dere maintanance. Dis is da type of thinking dat made da american cars great from da beginning and also da type of thinking dat will make dem great again. I am gonna stick with da Fords untill Red Robin finally wises up and starts to build cars instead of just making da best hamburgers in da world, if only dey had da gravy fer dere fries.

Wooow, this is actually pretty cool! And for it be coming out of ford is pretty interesting!

I want Fords with frikkin Laser beams under the frikkin hood !

Good job Ford! I hope it works like the article says.

Sounds good but if Lasers have an relibability issues the way a cars CD laser player is caused to skip then it may not be such a good thing; However, on the other hand, if its made to be extremely reliable and hard to foul up then Laser ignition may be the way to go. I would stil like Ford to produce a car that was electric and got 500 to 600 miles on pure electric instead. Forget ICE!

Stolen from another forum

“You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have engines with frickin’ laser beams attached to their (cylinder) heads!” – Dr. Evil

I want a Robot in mine so it can say Danger Danger William Robinson!

idrinorbarsaku I do not get yer name what does dat mean. Mine is pretty simple, my name is da Butch part and my brother had some of dem dere kids so dey call me da Uncle Butch, but I don’t get yers can you explain how da name works? Thanks

I bet dat da tripleonefive is da guys birthday like November 15 or maybe dat was da day dat he met his boyfriend er sumthing. I just don’t get da other one…

Will you be able to tune your engine to sound like Pink Floyd?

Wow! Another patent that wasn’t Toyota’s…how did that happen? I thought every great patent was by Toyota and everyone else just paid them for it….Humm. Great job Ford! Engineers RULE!!

lasers in yo face!

Sharks with laser beams to replace security guards.

Johnny, i don’t know about laser making engine sound like another side of the moon, but I recall hearing the whole album one night in a car that had no stereo! I believe this was induced by White Horse.

Another example on why the internal combustion engine won’t be dying anytime soon, to many politicians chagrin.

Seriously, Uncle Butch, the Andy Kaufman style comedy isn’t that funny…

Ok this is flippin’ cool… I just have one question, can I take my “Laser plug” out and modify it to shoot at my neighbor?

Jake, I think Andy Kaufman comedy was hilarious when was done by Andy Kaufman!

They actually focused on something that hasn’t been upgraded for a long long time and came up with something before the japs did. Great job Ford!

Realistically speaking of technology, I don’t know how important laser is: we homing on direct injection as superior technology to begin with (just like in diesel). The current issue with direct technology is application in smaller displacement engines, but with censors (perhaps very same lasers not used for ignition but for data collection and transmission) the issue will be overcome. Nevertheless, it is an excellent solution, to a problem which is going away.

ACTUALLY I KNEW ABOUT THIS A FEW YEARS BACK, AND IF I CAN’T RECALL BUT I DONT THINK FORD WAS THE ONE THAT CAME UP OR INVENTED THIS TECHNOLOGY.

So… once this switch has been made… can I just call down to Scotty in Engineering when I need more power?

I mean if we just tweak the matter-antimatter intermix ratio a little, we should safely be able to achieve Warp 9.9 with minimal danger to the plasma manifold.

OOPS TYPO MEANT “IF I CAN RECALL FORD WASN’T THE ONE THAT CAME UP OR INVENTED THIS TECHNOLOGY”

toyota holds all the patents? toyota may hold a few patents, but it is ze germans who have invented most everything important on your auto.

HAHAHA U FUNNY RAINEMAN. I THINK IT WAS AN OLD ARTICLE IN A MOTOR TREND I THINK IT WAS LIKE 2 YEARS BACK AND IT SAID LASER WILL REPLACE SPARK PLUGS ONE DAY

I also like where RaineMan’s going, although I still maintain if a select number of cars were allowed to be equipped with Phaser technology it would an effective means of reducing traffic gridlock.

I know what the jakeK66 means I bet dat da Jake is your first name K is da initial dat starts your last name and da 66 is yer IQ?

Captain Captain I’ve got to have more time with out any Dilithium Crystals to replace what we’ve got I don’t know how much more she can take before she’ll blow!~

Is there any correlation between lateral grip and horsepower? Reason I ask is because you’re supposed to give gas going around a corner after reaching the apex to push the car in the right direction, but does this increase your lateral grip if you have more horses to push with?

@Butch, I always though JakeK66 was a satanist. His name is Jake. The K is the first letter of KKK and 66 are the last to numbers in 666. So he made a hybrid of KKK and 666. It shows the relationship between the two, but it’s sad that KKK were white American Christians and 666 is dearly loved by either white atheists that mock the Bible or satanists. The sad part is that they are connected, Christians (Jesus takes you to heaven) and Atheists/Satanists (I’ll take you to hell, if there is one.)

Well, that’s what I think everytime I read a comment by JakeK66. Am I the only one?
P.S. I’m a Christian… for real. And I am as honest as I can be here.

Lasers make everything better.

Being an American is so great. Ford is really making a name for themselves, much like they did when the Model A was introduced. Congrads

i wouldn’t mind seein a demo of this engine in action. sounds cool.

DA BUTCH—
Congradulations. Just when we thought no you could be more annoying than NMOFGM you have risen to the challenge….. Thoughts anyone?

Pavlindrom—
That may be a little deep for a car enthusiat blog board…

BTW folks, all of the development is taking place at Ford U.K.; working alongside with scientists from Liverpool University. AKA, they’re all British.

Just so people don’t get misinformed that this is an American invention…

My mom always said dat I would never amount to anything, I wish dat she could see me now…

I already posted this here 2 days ago.

Way to be swift LLN!!!

Very nice, I’ve been very impressed by Ford lately. Looks like they’re gonna be the top dogs, or at least one of them. I mean, lasers seem like a very good idea, but like any emerging technology they need to perfect it.

This story broke last week. I did not believe it then. I do not believe it now. It sounds like Ford’s European engineers are playing a joke on the automotive press. Lasers are finicky. If they are to be used to initiate combustion, then the ignition is likely to require high-power lasers. The higher the power, the more finicky they become. It is unclear if this ignition system will use one laser per combustion chamber or if it will use a central laser and distribute the radiation to each cylinder via optical fibers.

This is only the beginning of the complexity. This system is reported to include multiple ignition points in each cylinder. This requires beam splitters for each cylinder. It also requires focusing optics for each ignition point. Here’s the problem: lasers–particularly high-power lasers–damage their topics. Be they lenses or mirrors, laser optics must be replaced on an irregular basis even under controlled laboratory conditions. Automobiles present environments that are orders of magnitude harsher than any laser laboratory environment. Expect frequent replacements of optics.

The bottomline is that a laser-based ignition system will necessarily be much more complex and expensive than ignition systems based on conventional spark plugs or the newer plasma plugs. I am at a loss to see the advantages of laser-based systems.

Forgive me for sounding like an idiot, but how would a laser generate enough heat to ignite the air-fuel mixture in the cylinders? Just curious.

Uncle Butch,
idrinorbarsaku is the awesome feeling I get when I see someone butcher my name!
It’s my name: Idrinor Barsaku!

On a side note, WTF are you? You act like you can’t spell, but you write like you’re black! I don’t see how any of your stuff is funny!

Richard take heart because I am sure Ford would not implement something that did not make first economic sense over conventional Spark Plugs or would they? Yes if anyone has ever experienced what a skiipping CD sounds like in their car understands the laser either can’t read the disc because of a Scratch, the optics on the laser is too dirty for it to read the music and or the spindle in broken on which the CD resides. So take your pick. It may increase fuel economy and may be far more reliable than spark plugs or is it the other way around? I still like my idea of a pure electric car that Gets 3000 mile on a single charge and can blast off to Jupiter , Saturn, or Titan one of Saturns Moons for the weekend getaways! Remember let us not forget my gal and me in our Thong Bikinis staying at the Courtyard Jupiter Marriott’s in door pool its too chilly outside geesh!

LOL…….Ford has “higher end models”?!

The only people who’ll be complaining about this is the dealerships who won’t get to charge $50 a piece for plugs every 100,000 miles.

I actually see this as an enabling technology to reduce the compression levels required to ignite diesel and allow for far higher boost and far more power from diesel turbos.

I also see this as not only an ignition mechanism, but an emissions mechanism with a second set of lasers in the catalytic converter to further burn unspent fuel before using up the valuable heavy metals in the catalytic converter. There’s cost savings to be had all over the place here.

Also, I would imagine that the biggest barrier to the introduction of lasers to the IC has been heat, and now that seems to be solved I’m sure you’re going to see lasers used for just about every sensor in an engine and combined with modern computers it’ll allow for infinitely adjustable ignition, fuel, air mixing to get the absolute best and cleanest burn for any load and RPM.

And don’t forget how sensitive lasers can be to measuring distances. An array of lasers pointing at the ground around a car would be one helluva great way to monitor the attitude of a car in relation to the actual surroundings and the ability to have the suspension react accordingly. Imagine if a car knows a pothole is coming before the tire discovers it.

The possibilities are endless, and I’m glad the modern car is coming and solid-state technology is leading the way.

Payton,
I hope you are right! I just wonder, if this is such a great technology, why hasn’t someone already tinkered with it? Or have they already done it and come up with a conclusion that it will be far too costly to implement?

I’m in the same boat as Richard, honestly. As cool as this sounds, the lasers would have to generate intense heat (the ones in your CD player do not), and if I recall, lasers never stop traveling until they have traveled through enough particulate matter to absorb them completely. Unless there is some kind of material or reflector to keep the laser from burning a hole in the cylinder… And yeah, I know that cylinders handle a lot of heat, but it is distributed heat, and not focused on a single point like a laser would be.

2Wheel, as fun as it would seem, I doubt you’d be able to detach these lasers. They’re probably bound up like the ones in your CD player.

Also, Bankruptcy, CDs skipping has to do with the reflection of the laser not finding its way back to the lens properly, not the laser dying out. Bumpy roads wouldn’t affect ignition like a CD skipping due to the fact that a cylinder is much larger than the width of the lines on your CD. In other words, the laser doesn’t need to hit a tiny target, only generate enough heat in a certain general area to cause ignition. I don’t think we’ll be seeing “ignition skipping” with this technology.

Also, I don’t think anyone here wants to see you in a thong bikini on Titan in 2035. Your girl, maybe (if she’s hot), but you’ll be, what, 40 by then?

Sorry folks, but it”s ford UK who has reportedly invented this, meaning if it ever goes on sale, it will probably be in Europe first, and maybe only in Europe (just like TDCi engine which seems not able to cross the atlantic).

Secondly, I agree with richard, what is the point of this setup? the aim is to ignite the fuel, and a spark plug does it wonderfully and reliably. Modern injection system are trying to homogenize as much as possible the fuel-air mixture in the cylinder to that combustion is complete, then I don’t understand how a laser ignition will be superior to the good old spark plug, except that it may be able to ignite more than once and supposedly would help to perform a complete combustion. But come on, how on earth a laser and the lens will be able to withstand the pressure and heat inside of a cylinder?

beatusmongous even if I was 25 and looked like Chris Carmack I would’nt want another guy oogling me. But I could care less who I am with when on Jupiter with as long as she is hot and reaDY LIKE A MORNING BISCUIT LOL . aND YES i’LL BE WEARING A Thong Bikinis too in shAPE even if age robs me of my Masculine Muscular Rocky mountain look ! lol

So, this might get one more MPG? MAYBE???

Well, laa-dee-frickin-da…

How about concentrating on building a premium car line for 10% under the competitiion?

1. Spark plugs, or their laser replacements, will not disappear from an ICE engine, so new technologies for ignition are not a waste. Direct Injection still requires a spark plug, it doesnt turn Gas engines into diesels.

2. The lasers and their lenses on this would be 100x the tech of old 80’s era CD player technology. The lenses will probably be industrial diamond suspended on titanium or palladium. and with the splitting and rapid firing they could allow for dozens of combustion points and almost 100% IMMEDIATE and INITIAL fuel burning, its all burned in an instant, no delayed burn, no flame in the headers.

3. I really look forward to seeing this implemented on a large line of vehicle. tie them into to the ECU and have the car tune ignition and fuel delivery to allow insane performance second by second.

I am all for Laser just as long as Ford will double up my fun and leave a Phaser in my Glove Box for would be car jackers! lol. Ok Spock set your phasers on stun remember the prime directive.

idrinorbarsaku is dat one of dem names dat you get at dat Ellis Island place like when they cannot pronounce your real name?

ahahahahahaa, did your parents think that it was more important to spend their money on crack rather than paying for your school??

By the way, your statement actually doesn’t make any sense!!

@beatusmongous and volo

Laser-based ignition would not rely on thermal processes. The system would have to rely on quantum absorption by the fuel-air mixture of the laser photons. Actually, I don’t see how the process can possibly work unless the laser is tuned to a dominant absorption line of oxygen gas.

I have used mirror-focused infrared lasers to generate small explosions in air. It was a pulsed carbon dioxide laser. It was heavier than an automobile fuel tank and almost as large. This would be totally out of the question for automobile ignition system applications. It is likely that a solid state laser or lasers would be required.

Although you guys are mistaken about the physics of the ignition, your larger point is on the money. The ignition system will require high-power lasers. High power lasers require high voltage, high-pulse rate power supplies. HalGameGuru mentioned using industrial diamond lenses. I am not aware of lenses using diamonds as the optical medium. Even though diamonds are durable in mechanical applications, it is not at all clear that they can endure the rigors of transmitting high-power laser beams for the 100,000 mile life of an automobile ignition system.

HalGameGuru is not alone. Most of the positive expectations of laser-based ignition reveal a complete and total lack of understanding of lasers. Many also display a lack of understanding of fuel combustion in automobile engines.

this is total crap

i’m just gonna say this: i can change my own spak plugs.

I better start brushing up on my Quantum Mechanics

I’d appreciate not being called out on ignorance without some sort of info to back up the accusation.

Diamonds have been used as lenses for lasers for a good long while, even in as mundane of uses as tattoo removal and depilatory treatments, automotive use was an assumption on my part but not unexpected. I am leaning towards diamonds for splitting and refraction rather than the initial lensing of the beam also.

Assuming anyone here will divine the actual methodology for laser ignition either from brute force beam power or multi-beam focal points, or whatever is being rather over analytical, this is a layman’s bull session. Not the lab doing the work.

They have a wide range of hardwares, frequencies, and arrangements for how they will do this, and only when they publicly demonstrate it may we be given the whole picture on their design.

A lack of experience with modern high-power laser technology is a given for most people, especially for a new application not previously explored. but to assume your patronizing and condescending stance towards our comments speaks a lot more towards your OPINION of your own experience rather than its value to our discussion. And a big assumption on that also when the only reference you draw from are what sound like university lab CO2 lasers.

There are people taking blue lasers apart for garage projects and experiments that 10 years ago universities were fighting over.

Actually this could actually be better than Spark Plugs all together. Meaning your car may never need a tune up for Life. The Laser could be that flawless. I am not so sure Ford wants to make them that good for the maintenance guys but then again if you can make it better than why Not??????????????

AH yes let the Laser Light show begin Ahhahahahahahahah Ah ahahahahahaah ahahahahahahah!

Nice! Good job Ford!

idrinorbarsaku – re Uncle bitch sorry Butch

ahahahahahaa, did your parents think that it was more important to spend their money on crack rather than paying for your school??

LMFAO

Quality mate

re the slant on American Idea – - its still British engineers resolving the problem

My parents didn’t have to buy da crack, my mom was a very hefty lady and like my dad said she had a couple hundred pounds a da crack in her pants whenever dey needed it.

HAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHH!!! I knew you were a crack family!!!!

wobbs, like once a month my mom must have cut herself cause we found these tightly wadded cotton balls with strings on these. We called dese Wobbs

uNCLE Butch you did need to be cared for for the rest of your natural and or un-natural life! lol

I like da group atmosphere of my home.

I have serious concerns on how complicated this system could end up being. I’ll tell you one thing, I won’t be one of those buying a car with the system the first few years it is out. Let others deal with the problems while they work out the bugs.

My concerns are about the durability of the system. These are going to be high intensity lasers, not the wimpy little sensor lasers used elsewhere in cars already. I have a 20mW green laser that with a fresh set of batteries can pop a balloon. Hand held 150mW versions are available that quickly burn through electrical tape and light matches. These are in packages that are the size of a pen light. Most of that space is used for the AAA batteries. So I am not that concerned about the size in a vehicle or the power requirements. If you have ever been shocked by the coil when trying to trouble shoot a no spark problem, you will understand just how much power is available.

I am more concerned about the duribility long term of such a system. The diodes tend to noticably dim after a certain number of hours of use. Lasers are consumable, and expensive. This will not be a lifetime of the car type part but a wear item and an expensive one at that.

Also, i would think that an optical system could very quickly get fouled up in a car that is not running perfectly. If the O2 sensor goes bad and the car starts to run rich, or when there is some oil blowby, or carbon buildup, this would screw up an optical ignition system very easily. If you have ever pulled the plugs on a car and seen the way they look if a car is not very well maintained, you will know what I am talking about. Even a thin layer of oil over the optics would scatter the light enough to keep it from igniting the air/fuel.

Not to say that they will not be able to overcome theses obsticals, but I think there will be some teething issues on the early models in production as real world use comes into play.

Side note.

Don’t feed the troll.

You know what I am talking about.

Your CommentUncle Butch

wobbs, like once a month my mom must have cut herself cause we found these tightly wadded cotton balls with strings on these. We called dese Wobbs

– ROFL – hahah like it

yeah your mum used to bitch about you all the time whilst I was rinding her like a freight train

do you think they will let you make the engine fire and light up to some pink floyd?

Your Comment

Odd. I thought HCCI-like engines were all the rage nowadays, no spark plugs or other ignition sources needed, since the compression alone was the ignition source (like Diesels). So where does this technology fit in?