Technology Futures

The Scuderi Group have announced a new internal combustion engine that sure looks like a game changer. At this point, I can guess some of you have already started to yawn, as a whole host of "game changing" internal combustion engine designs over the past thirty years have made than claim (can anyone spell "adiabatic?").

But the Scuderi split cycle engine design is the result of more than twenty U.S. patents, and for engine buffs, the detailed descriptions of the engine, how it works, and why it works is jaw-dropping.

• How about a 1 mm clearance between the cylinder and the cylinder head?
• How about outward opening valves?
• How about compression ratios of 75:1 with internal cylinder pressures of up to 1,885 psi?
• How about fuel injectors that push the fuel in at pressures up to 3,000 psi?
• The Scuderi engine fires After Top Dead Center, which has always been considered a bad/difficult thing to do.
• The engine uses a split cycle configuration, which means it can store waste energy as compressed air to inject into the next firing cycle, increasing overall efficiency.

This short list of innovations does not do the engine justice, but think about a car with a Scuderi engine. My four door sedan, which has a 1.8 liter engine, would shed several hundred pounds of weight and handle very nicely with a smaller Scuderi engine, and would likely go from 32 mpg on the highway to something over 50 mpg. With gas prices passing $3 a gallon and headed towards $4/gallon, squeezing more mileage out of fossil fuels is going to be very attractive. The Scuderi engine can burn gas, diesel, propane, natural gas, and almost any kind of biofuel and renewable fuel. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for a major car manufacturer to bring a Scuderi-powered vehicle to market.

Scuderi, Volkswagen, and other manufacturers that are focused on high efficiency internal combustion engines are going to make life very difficult for the hybrid and electric car market. The hybrids, with their expensive batteries and complicated drive trains, are not price competitive with high efficiency internal combustion vehicles. And it is a myth that the hybrids are "zero emission." You have to charge the batteries with some kind of electric power, and in the U.S., it is probably coal.

Finally, and I have been ranting about this for years, we simply don't have an electric distribution grid that can handle charging large numbers of electric vehicles. It requires a massive investment in new Smart Grid technology, including fiber broadband infrastructure to every premise, to make this work well. We need and want Smart Grid for other kinds of energy conservation reasons, but I'm betting Scuderi engines are going to be more common than hybrid vehicles over the next ten years.

The tiny Isle of Jersey will be getting Gigabit fiber to the home as part of an initiative by the incumbent Jersey Telecom to replace all copper-based services with fiber over the next five years. Maybe some U.S. incumbents should make a trip to Jersey (in the English Channel just off the coast of France) to learn how to construct a business case that allows dumping 100 year old copper technology for something a little newer.

The always excellent Muni Networks has an article that sheds additional light on Burlington Telecom. The article includes a response from Tim Nulty, who helped start the BT venture.

Nulty sheds some light on the early take rate targets; BT had financial plan pegged to meeting take rate projections, and the network was meeting those take rates. The financial pro formas Nulty was using shows that BT was on track not only to cover operating expenses but to begin paying back the borrowed funds. But inexplicably, after Nulty left, the marketing effort that was in place and was meeting take rate targets was dropped. Predictably, the number of new customers being added also dropped, and at that point, the project began sliding downhill financially.

This is Nulty's side of the story, and there are still several other points of view. But Nulty's explanation rings true and sheds some light on what may have happened. A good marketing effort is critical, and it has to be sustained over time. Community networks that take a field of dreams approach to marketing, "If we build it and then just sit back and wait for customers" will have trouble meeting financial targets, just as any other business.

Community-owned telecom infrastructure cannot be treated like sidewalks--you build and let it sit for thirty years. Governing boards and senior staff have to have a solid business plan and demonstrated experience managing substantial business enterprises. A community broadband network cannot be treated like a typical nonprofit-- which typically have a narrow mission and no paying customers.

The Sixth Circuit Court decision on email being protected by the Fourth Amendment contains the fascinating story behind the, uh, "male enhancement" product called "Enzyte" and the infamous Smilin' Bob character who appeared in the annoying late night TV commercials. The entire document runs 98 pages, but pages 4 through 12 describe in detail how a $250 million a year complete scam is set up and run. And yes, if you don't bother to read the decision, the short story is that Enzyte was a scam from beginning to end. But the Enzyte folks had 27,000 emails seized without a warrant, which led to this decision, and so in an odd way, Enzyte turned out to be a good thing for all of us.