Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[Hoffman900]

Battery resources too are finite and ever evolving.

What do you mean by that? You don't burn batteries so all the precious material will remain there. And as battery usage increases it will only be cheaper to recycle old worn out batteries.

Ethanol and green hydrogen too are possible future fuels to consider aside from biofuels.

This is a tad contradictory. Ethanol is bio-fuel. It's the only way we produce it. Albeit very costly.
Hydrogen is not really a fuel in the traditional sense. There's none just lying around to be used, and it's not even bio-produced by anone. You need to synthesize it. It's a very problematic power storage medium. Inefficient to produce store and use, compared to batteries.

Those are assumptions made with the notion that ICE will never evolve. A part of going carbon neutral is electrification, but doesn't necessarily mean fully electric for all cars.

ICE has little room for improvement at this point IMO, and that at great cost. Besides it can't match the potential of even fuel-cell EVs. By far the most significant improvement it had in practice in recent times was hybridization.

You havent been reading research papers I see. Ispano is correct on a number of things there.

Lead researchers consider green-fuels to be the next stage for mobility because of the challenges and limitations with battery technology. Mining of the raw materials posion the environment just as much as oil if not more. Some mines are not ethicaly operated. Current batteries are extremely expensive to recycle. The Lithium is limited and in a few countries and will be another strained Geo-political resource in due time. Battery obseletion is an issue too, among other issues.

This has been discussed at length on here already but basically no major automaker is putting their eggs into one basket.

Jump to fifty seconds in the video below where a Professor in engineer does a way better explanation than I can do.

https://www.wusa9.com/video/entertainme ... wsource=cl

"Green fuels" are poison too, you just shift the environmental burden.

Take ethanol for instance, parts of the world are cutting down rainforest to grow it, here in the States we replaced MTBE in gasoline with at minimum, 10% of ethanol. This has lead to soil nutrient depletion (which requires fertilizers (not green)) and is leading to aquifer collapse as corn is a water intensive crop. Furthermore, nutrient runoff is causing water ways and a large portion of the Gulf of Mexico to go hypoxic, basically killing all living life.

Seaweed, to produce at any meaningful scale also becomes an industrialized process and requires fertilizations, create a monoculture. If not done in the ocean, it requires A LOT of water. At this point, it also requires more petroleum to manufacture than it produces in biofuel.

< geologist who worked on groundwater and surfacewater hydrology projects.

I love the IC, but I'm in the there is technically nothing that is "carbon zero" or "sustainable" at the scales at which we consume. It's a lot of green washing.

[restless]

Mining of the raw materials posion the environment just as much as oil if not more. Some mines are not ethicaly operated. Current batteries are extremely expensive to recycle. The Lithium is limited and in a few countries and will be another strained Geo-political resource in due time. Battery obseletion is an issue too, among other issues.

All of this is unfounded propaganda. (Except the "ethical" stuff, which no-one actually cares about.)

Would you volunteer to work mining lithium in Bolivia, Chile or China?
Wasting huge amounts of water in deserts, very ecology-friendly, green and modern...

[henry]

https://f1-motorsports-gp.com/wp-conten ... RA621H.jpg

CAC Bypass 2（Charge Air Cooler Bypass 2）
The POV was between CAC and Surge Turk, releasing unnecessary boost pressure to the induction pod.
It means that the work that the compressor was doing was abandoned.
By adding a bypass valve between the compressor and the turbine, the CB2 merges the released intake air with the exhaust and uses it to drive the turbine.

I think doing that would be illegal. That Idea was floated around here quite a bit when these engines came to be in 2014. But the rules said all air going through the compressor must pass through the engine.
.

That’s not what the the regulations say.

5.8.1 With the exception of incidental leakage through joints (either into or out of the system) and power unit breather fluids, all and only the fluids entering the compressor inlet and fuel injectors must exit from the engine exhaust system.

So you can feed the compressor outlet directly to the exhaust as is suggested by the CAC Bypass.

[ispano6]

Battery resources too are finite and ever evolving.

What do you mean by that? You don't burn batteries so all the precious material will remain there. And as battery usage increases it will only be cheaper to recycle old worn out batteries.

Ethanol and green hydrogen too are possible future fuels to consider aside from biofuels.

This is a tad contradictory. Ethanol is bio-fuel. It's the only way we produce it. Albeit very costly.
Hydrogen is not really a fuel in the traditional sense. There's none just lying around to be used, and it's not even bio-produced by anone. You need to synthesize it. It's a very problematic power storage medium. Inefficient to produce store and use, compared to batteries.

Those are assumptions made with the notion that ICE will never evolve. A part of going carbon neutral is electrification, but doesn't necessarily mean fully electric for all cars.

ICE has little room for improvement at this point IMO, and that at great cost. Besides it can't match the potential of even fuel-cell EVs. By far the most significant improvement it had in practice in recent times was hybridization.

You should understand that the point that I am making is about a fully electric line up vs having hybrids and EVs. The Honda folk I speak to regularly are in the hybrid camp. Clean ICE tech + battery EV. I've mentioned here in the past Honda's fluoride-ion battery innovation working with NASA and other battery tech such as sodium ion.

Lithium batteries aren't typically recycled and put back into cars. They are usually put into other systems such as windmills etc. The finite material in these batteries include cobalt, that which is either hard to attain or only available from certain countries that mine it. Japan has discovered about a hundred year supply of it and is exploring ways to excavate it, but of course met with environmentalist opposition. There are challenges all the time when it comes to batteries.

Yes bio-ethanol is a biofuel, and there are other biofuels like biodiesel, bio-methane etc. Ethanol is a bio-additive to gasoline. Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water, mainly using renewable energy like solar power. Honda has already developed such a system too. Countries like Saudi Arabia and other areas like California with good sun exposure are prime locations for producing it. These 'alternatives fuels' are met with lesser opposition by environmentalists since growing crops of corn, algae and other biological sources have a lesser impact, unless land meant for other natural processes are encroached upon.

Fuel cell EVs are great, I'm a big fan of them. If countries and cities would provide and adopt the supporting infrastructure I can see it having a larger market share. That infrastructure investment is where the cost becomes a showstopper. ICE infrastructure is well established and synthetic fuels/flow battery fuel can piggy back off it. New cities or developing countries have a clean slate to get a head start on hydrogen. Electric trains can be the main mode of mass transit. Aramco is pushing for such a future.

Having worked in the automotive space for the last 14 years I can see the promise that many technologies and innovation can bring, but ultimately people need to welcome and usher in that sustainable future. I expect EV (of some flavor) cars to be at least 50% of the vehicles on the road by 2050, ICE hybrids vehicles may be on the decline but not fully out of the picture.

[PlatinumZealot]

You havent been reading research papers I see. Ispano is correct on a number of things there.

Lead researchers consider green-fuels to be the next stage for mobility because of the challenges and limitations with battery technology.

The mystical "lead researchers". Naturally people working one one thing are pushing that thing.
Reality is not moving in that direction of green fuels. So far there's little going for it.
Producing crops for bio-fuel is an abomination of a waste. And so far there's no process to produce fuel on a wide-scale from actual waste, economically. The FIA claimed such, but it's wholly unproven, and in fact they released zero details about it.
Synthesizing fuel is just a waste of energy that could be used to power BEVs.

Mining of the raw materials posion the environment just as much as oil if not more. Some mines are not ethicaly operated. Current batteries are extremely expensive to recycle. The Lithium is limited and in a few countries and will be another strained Geo-political resource in due time. Battery obseletion is an issue too, among other issues.

All of this is unfounded propaganda. (Except the "ethical" stuff, which no-one actually cares about.)
Batteries are not expensive to recycle there's just too little of it. And in "due time" lithium needs will plainly plummet, because of the huge build-up of aged-out batteries.
The oil comparison is ridiculous, if you saw images of broken oil tankers or even oil leaks at extraction sites. There's also the very environmentally unpopular fracking. That thing is filthy and it goes everywhere. Not to mention the burning of it.
Mining of lithium is no worse than any other mineral ore.

Not unfounded propaganda. There are huge coverups in the lithium battery industry just like other mining sources.

For the big picture it is not one or the other you know. We should not clip technologies prematurely. We should let EV play out alongside green-fuels. Because there are places whose needs that cannot be econmically met with EV technology.

I hope you watched the video I posted. Any comments?

[PlatinumZealot]

https://f1-motorsports-gp.com/wp-conten ... RA621H.jpg

CAC Bypass 2（Charge Air Cooler Bypass 2）
The POV was between CAC and Surge Turk, releasing unnecessary boost pressure to the induction pod.
It means that the work that the compressor was doing was abandoned.
By adding a bypass valve between the compressor and the turbine, the CB2 merges the released intake air with the exhaust and uses it to drive the turbine.

I think doing that would be illegal. That Idea was floated around here quite a bit when these engines came to be in 2014. But the rules said all air going through the compressor must pass through the engine.
.

That’s not what the the regulations say.

5.8.1 With the exception of incidental leakage through joints (either into or out of the system) and power unit breather fluids, all and only the fluids entering the compressor inlet and fuel injectors must exit from the engine exhaust system.

So you can feed the compressor outlet directly to the exhaust as is suggested by the CAC Bypass.

My mistake. Memory failed me.
Surprisingly I had comments suggesting ideas for this. 2014 is a long time ago.

[mzso]

I hope you watched the video I posted. Any comments?

It's inaccessible. Either because you provided a broken link, or some other reason. So, no.

Even the base domain doesn't seem to load.

[mzso]

Lithium batteries aren't typically recycled and put back into cars. They are usually put into other systems such as windmills etc.

Which is a good thing. At least they're not gathering dust until it becomes economical to reprocess them.

Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water, mainly using renewable energy like solar power. Honda has already developed such a system too. Countries like Saudi Arabia and other areas like California with good sun exposure are prime locations for producing it. These 'alternatives fuels' are met with lesser opposition by environmentalists since growing crops of corn, algae and other biological sources have a lesser impact, unless land meant for other natural processes are encroached upon.

I touched upon this. That precious energy is better used charging batteries, than wasting it on hydrogen. Splitting water is like 70% efficient, compression efficiency is around 50%, fuel cells maybe 70 at best. So that's already around 25%. And you have to haul around hydrogen and you have have to drive your car to fuel stations. So what's the point? (there is none) And of course burning hydrogen instead is an even more obnoxious waste.

Fuel cell EVs are great, I'm a big fan of them. If countries and cities would provide and adopt the supporting infrastructure I can see it having a larger market share. That infrastructure investment is where the cost becomes a showstopper. ICE infrastructure is well established and synthetic fuels/flow battery fuel can piggy back off it. New cities or developing countries have a clean slate to get a head start on hydrogen. Electric trains can be the main mode of mass transit. Aramco is pushing for such a future.

After the above-mentioned, I just see it as an extra negative factor.
Only small nieche's can see potentially viable, where weight is of primary importance like airplanes, or maybe where the energy need is extraordinary like unelectrified train tracks. But even then not hydrogen. But some good bioLPG or similar from actual waste.

Having worked in the automotive space for the last 14 years I can see the promise that many technologies and innovation can bring, but ultimately people need to welcome and usher in that sustainable future. I expect EV (of some flavor) cars to be at least 50% of the vehicles on the road by 2050, ICE hybrids vehicles may be on the decline but not fully out of the picture.

Banning stuff can accelerate things quite a bit. By 2050 I doubt any would be allowed to go on sale. As for being allowed on roads to humor enthusiasts depends on the respective governments' harshness.
But I can imagine when most cars are EVs loud and stinking ICE would be looked upon rather hostilely.

[ispano6]

Banning stuff can accelerate things quite a bit. By 2050 I doubt any would be allowed to go on sale. As for being allowed on roads to humor enthusiasts depends on the respective governments' harshness.
But I can imagine when most cars are EVs loud and stinking ICE would be looked upon rather hostilely.

Trust me, I have no love for my neighbor's classic Shelby Cobra that is loud as hell and smells noxious. He's a 70+ ex-military retired police officer who loves his exhaust fumes and talks about all the negative environmental impact of EVs. Every time he starts up his car I need to close all my windows of my house so that my daughters don't breath in that goddamn ground-level ozone. Sometimes it takes a generation to have to die-off before such a ban can come about. It may better serve society to incentivize getting rid of the older, high-emissions vehicles or have a trade-in program or ability to swap out a high-emissions power-train with a zero-emissions one into their beloved car/truck/roadster. So long as your ICE is not emitting smog or ground-level ozone producing NOx or CO or excess carbon, combustion engines still have a place.

Many have said Honda leaving F1 is for "political" reasons. If the carbon tax is "political", then I guess being carbon neutral is. But honestly I think Honda is leaving for the right reasons - and it may also come back for the right reasons.

Bringing this conversation back to F1, the next decade of F1 cars will still be hybrids and future ES may be using fluoride-ion batteries that have 10x energy density than lithium-ion (at least the one developed by Honda/Caltech/NASA https://www.electrochem.org/ecs-blog/ho ... akthrough/). Toyota has been developing a similar fluoride-ion battery with University of Kyoto that is 7x the energy density of lithium-ion which could end up in prototype LM cars. Lithium-ion EV can be considered a "stop-gap" solution - this is well agreed upon. Using synthetic/bio fuels and next-generation battery tech may lure Honda into sharing and testing their innovations and tech with Red Bull Technologies. Perhaps once RBT is up and running Honda doesn't need to have to go it alone and instead partners with RBT to develop the application of the technology. Honda could still deploy such tech into other racing classes such as Indy, LMP, Super GT, Super Formula etc too. It would be nice if American Honda could work harmoniously with Honda Japan when it comes to motor racing, but that seems like a long-shot. That is where I think Tanabe could be put to use, again.

[mzso]

Bringing this conversation back to F1, the next decade of F1 cars will still be hybrids and future ES may be using fluoride-ion batteries that have 10x energy density than lithium-ion (at least the one developed by Honda/Caltech/NASA https://www.electrochem.org/ecs-blog/ho ... akthrough/). Toyota has been developing a similar fluoride-ion battery with University of Kyoto that is 7x the energy density of lithium-ion which could end up in prototype LM cars. Lithium-ion EV can be considered a "stop-gap" solution - this is well agreed upon.

Let's just say I have a bookmarks folder with like hundreds of bookmarks about energy storage, mainly battery tech news. (And I wasn't very active in collecting in the past 2-3 years) There are a bunch of 3x-5x-10x energy density promises. Sometimes 100x power and such. But we still only have plain old li-ion...
Anyway, the most common is solid electrolyte Li batteries, so I have the best hopes for that coming about in some form.

I had a look and I do have fluorine stuff, though mostly fluorine in the electrolyte. One them from 2019 is about fluorid-ion, but it makes no claims that bold. Though your link is even older.

[Zynerji]

Meh. It's car racing.

Nitromethane and stfu.

[saviour stivala]

‘’working hard to make the power unit ready for this season testing times’’. From the latest reports from RBR top man himself, they seem to be working hard to as yet regain the loss of power compared to last year’s power unit due to this year's mandated use of the new fuel formula.

[ispano6]

Bringing this conversation back to F1, the next decade of F1 cars will still be hybrids and future ES may be using fluoride-ion batteries that have 10x energy density than lithium-ion (at least the one developed by Honda/Caltech/NASA https://www.electrochem.org/ecs-blog/ho ... akthrough/). Toyota has been developing a similar fluoride-ion battery with University of Kyoto that is 7x the energy density of lithium-ion which could end up in prototype LM cars. Lithium-ion EV can be considered a "stop-gap" solution - this is well agreed upon.

Let's just say I have a bookmarks folder with like hundreds of bookmarks about energy storage, mainly battery tech news. (And I wasn't very active in collecting in the past 2-3 years) There are a bunch of 3x-5x-10x energy density promises. Sometimes 100x power and such. But we still only have plain old li-ion...
Anyway, the most common is solid electrolyte Li batteries, so I have the best hopes for that coming about in some form.

I had a look and I do have fluorine stuff, though mostly fluorine in the electrolyte. One them from 2019 is about fluorid-ion, but it makes no claims that bold. Though your link is even older.

Prototype fluoride-ion battery prototypes already exist. They aren't in the "theoretical" stage, your bookmarks are dated and need some updating. Here's one for starters: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Techno ... EV-battery
It requires cobalt, which is one of the problematic materials required for batteries and Japan is in the process of obtaining a supply from within it's territories. The projected commercial availability is early 2030s, and it may be used in non-commercial applications much sooner, be it F1/prototype racing, aviation, aerospace etc. You can go ahead and continue to carry your hopes in lithium all power to you. I'm just bringing to light what Honda is dabbing into, just like I was regarding their early research on carbon nano-tubes that actually was utilized in their F1 energy store. As a Honda fan I'm always intrigued by what is possible from their various efforts - its the power of dreams and even the sky isn't the limit. With their eVTOL and satellite launch vehicle initiatives, there's a lot of R&D that can be applied in various sectors. Plenty of time for it to be applied to the next F1 power unit formula.

[Hoffman900]

Can we talk about the 2022 unit?

Apparently it's a new unit, what were the short comings of the 2021 iteration that need to be changed? I'm not seeing much, but I'm assuming it'll be focused around the combustion end of things.

[saviour stivala]

Can we talk about the 2022 unit?

Apparently it's a new unit, what were the short comings of the 2021 iteration that need to be changed? I'm not seeing much, but I'm assuming it'll be focused around the combustion end of things.

The focus right now at least according to RBR top man is regaining the lost power compared to the power unit of last year by the use of the new fuel mandated for use this year.