The prototype engine could be especially important for Ford.
Imagine the surprise, then, when the EPA announced in January that it had developed a prototype diesel engine that would meet clean-air requirements.
Combined with an engine prototype, the dynamometer allows researchers to control the tiniest variables to assess performance.
Fazle Hussain and Michael Goldshtik, of the University of Houston, in Texas, have taken this thinking much further, and built (with the help of their students) a prototype of an engine with a liquid piston.
Ford has made a prototype of the MIT engine and it performs as the MIT scientist said it would.
Reaction Engines is still a ways behind SpaceX: it has only a fraction of the funding and has yet to build an actual prototype of a hybrid engine, never mind the Skylon, a proposed spaceplane that it would power.
FORBES: As SpaceX Launches, Hybrid Engine May Have A Cheaper Solution?To Space Travel
Another time, an engineer was developing a prototype for a six-cylinder engine.
The XOS 2 is nearly usable for the latter job, but even at 50 percent more efficient than the original (by the company's last count) it's still a prototype that requires a tethered high-pressure hydraulic engine to function.
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The LF-A supercar prototype, equipped with a 500-horsepower V-10 engine, is a follow-up to a concept car Lexus debuted on the 2005 auto show circuit.
Its advanced engine-development centre, which opened this summer, hooks up an engine to a simulated computer model of an as-yet unbuilt prototype car, to see how well it performs.
This week it unveiled a prototype version of its 7-Series saloon car that has a hydrogen-powered engine.
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