The Future of the Internal Combustion Engine - Inside Koenigsegg
 

Interesting.

Using air to actuate each valve and a manifold system to direct the air to each actuator, I can only imagine sealing over the long term being the major hurdle. Too bad they didn't show how/what they were using to produce the air pressure.

Some of the pros are pretty cool though. Engine braking, no cam/cam timing/timing belt/valve adjutments, easy tuning, etc.

turbines perhaps

"Cars" that need high RPM uses air actuation to force the valves close.. eg F1 before the RPM limit. Pneumatic actuation reduces valve floats at high speed when the springs can't respond fast enough. The problem with the system is it is an additional subsystem so you add weight and high RPM is not that useful / cost effective in daily life.. that's why you don't see that many high RPM engines these days.

On consumer level Fiat's/ Chrysler's Multiair offers similar benefits for each individual cylinders.

Other people have tried with electromagnets but to miniaturize a system like that to a reasonable size, they have to use a higher voltage system... so I think it will happen when SAE decide which voltage standard they will stick with next... probably 48V and up.

That's some really amazing stuff, I wonder how different the car sounds with this

Yeah, initially, I thought they were electromagnets, until he explained further.

Honestly the future of IC motors won't be high performance, it will emphasis on efficiency and the ability to use a wider fuel stock.. eg Super lightweight intake manifolds that had gone through FEA anaylsis eg smooth but complex to squeeze out that extra .point % of fuel efficiency; light weight plastic oil pans. And I think the most importantly: transparent fuel capability so we can use a wider range of distillate our hydrocarbon distillary process including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphtha, which is junk right now.

IC can already propel cars faster than humans can handle with ease.. but we are still limited by be only able to use the very narrow product from our hydrocarbon sources... the future is to be able to exploit more of this finite resource. Not quite Mr. Fusion, but hopefully better than just 3 grades + diesel we have today.

Audi's R18 has a diesel version and a hybrid version.




And the Furai is ethanol powered
So it's ICE is still has options for the future once bio fuels come into play.

Not biofuel.. We don't have enough arable land on the planet for that.. LNG is what will tie us over right now before we have sulfur air batteries or full scale electrification.. at least 20 years away. People are concentrating making exisiting fossil fuel go further instead of finding new source of fuel eg biofuels.. because 2008-10 taught us is speculation caused more harm to the world.. in fact drought on corn and pressure to use it in eXX fuel gave us the highest beef cost ever.

The cutting edge of engine research is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_charge_compression_ignition. we are not there quite yet.