For this week’s episode of ‘Inside Koenigsegg’, we are again taken into a journey of deep technicalities where Mr. Christian von Koenigsegg walks us through a future innovation that might be seen fitted on cars a couple of years from now; the Free Valve technology.
As a quick rundown, the internal combustion piston engine that power vehicles for the past few decades might have seen some technological advancement, but are still bogged down by a few basic design limitations. One of them is the camshaft, which opens and closes the intake and exhaust valves through a mechanical linkage.
While changing camshafts before the days of variable valve timing was common to gain performance through increasing the lift and duration, this would also lead to the expense of a lumpy idle and increased emission. Today’s variable cam profiles managed to find a way around that, but a Swedish company called Cargine Engineering AB has a better way in mind.
Their Free Valve system relies on pneumatic valve actuators to open valves, and closed by either air pressure or springs. This ingenious design basically eliminates the need of a camshaft, thus giving the potential to reduce both engine size and shed down the weight. The individually-controlled valves gives out a more precise operation as possible, allowing it to have an increase to up to 30-percent in both horsepower and torque, and a jump in fuel economy. Cargine also claims an impressive figure of reduced overall emissions to 50-percent.
While this remarkable technology had yet to find its way to a production car, their test platform car, a Saab 9-5 has clocked 60,000km over two years with pneumatic-operated valves, and is still running strong. With the incredible advantages this new technology offers, we might see them a lot in years to come, and will definitely be in one of Koenigsegg’s future machines.
