Comments on: Mazda Kills The Rotary Engine https://www.isegoria.net/2011/10/mazda-kills-the-rotary-engine/ From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:05:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Doctor Pat https://www.isegoria.net/2011/10/mazda-kills-the-rotary-engine/comment-page-1/#comment-361868 Doctor Pat Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:07:51 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=26903#comment-361868 Meanwhile, Audi claims it will bring out a Wankel engine as part of a hybrid version of their A1. So the dodo lives on.

]]> By: Goober https://www.isegoria.net/2011/10/mazda-kills-the-rotary-engine/comment-page-1/#comment-361758 Goober Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:29:53 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=26903#comment-361758 Dr. Pat, agreed, boost can solve a lot of problems, but then you have the problem of increased NOX emissions. It isn’t easy, is what I’m saying, and since, like you said, you can make a recip piston engine do the same stuff a Wankel can do without having to reinvent the wheel, Wwankels have gone the way of the dodo. The wankel was different, but it wasn’t considerably better, so it died. Different doesn’t cut it. Only better can replace a paradigm as entrenched as recip piston ICE technology.

]]> By: Doctor Pat https://www.isegoria.net/2011/10/mazda-kills-the-rotary-engine/comment-page-1/#comment-361646 Doctor Pat Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:03:31 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=26903#comment-361646 It’s a sad day. But as sweet as the rotary engine is to drive, BMW, Honda and the like have shown that you can rev just as smoothly with a more conventional design. And being more conventional means that the various national laws are written to suit it, that mechanics know how to maintain it, and that there are tens of thousands of engineers around the world, each pushing to extend the reliability, performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of the piston design by 1% here, 0.5% there.

One division of one company just couldn’t keep up with a whole industry.

And Goober, there’s a simple solution to low compression ratios: lots of boost. ;)

]]> By: Goober https://www.isegoria.net/2011/10/mazda-kills-the-rotary-engine/comment-page-1/#comment-361303 Goober Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:22:58 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=26903#comment-361303 Wankels have one huge problem — efficiency. The efficiency issue comes from the fact that no one has indentified a way to get high enough compression out of the design to get good efficiency out of it.

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