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Hyundai Accent: GDI for the Masses
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Hybrids are great in the city, electric cars will be terrific for short range commuter and hydrogen fuel cell cars could break us free of petroleum if we live long enough, but the greatest new green technology on the market today is GDI. That's Gasoline Direct Injection. It's been available mostly in the high-end German stuff for a few years now but now it's standard equipment in an entry level car.
Michael Vaughan
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I attended the North American launch of the Hyundai Accent in Las Vegas. Many manufacturers do events here because hotel rooms are plentiful and cheap.
Michael Vaughan
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Personally, I find Vegas ridiculous and phony and I'd never come here on my own. But once you get outside Sin City, there are some good roads to drive and some interesting sites to see.
Michael Vaughan
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For instance, the Hoover Dam. It's about 30 kilometres from The Strip and the roads in the desert are pretty good from here on.
Michael Vaughan
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Okay, back to the story. This is the 2012 Hyundai Accent hatchback. It's a decent-looking car that is absolutely loaded with safety features, but what I like best is the engine.
Michael Vaughan
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This 1.6 litre 4 banger cranks out an amazing 136 horsepower. A regular gasoline engine sucks a mixture of gasoline and air into a cylinder, compresses it with a piston and lights it with a spark. Fuel Injected engines pre-mix the gasoline and air in the intake manifold before it goes into the cylinder. With Gasoline Direct Injection, air and gasoline are not pre-mixed. Air comes in through the intake manifold, while the highly-pressurized gasoline is injected directly into the cylinder.
Michael Vaughan
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With GDI you have a sophisticated Engine Management System measuring all kinds of temperatures, loads and driver inputs. You get extremely accurate fuel metering and injection timing. Plus, the high pressure injector fires the fuel just where it will do the most good, and maybe a few times on each cycle. The result is a much more complete combustion which means you're squeezing more power and less pollution out of each drop of gas.
Michael Vaughan
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GDI has been around a few years but mostly on the high-end German vehicles. What I like about Hyundai's approach is that they are putting GDI in their entry-level car. Yes, you can get GDI from other volume manufacturers but it's generally an expensive option and nobody else offers it at any price on a $15,000 sub-compact.
Michael Vaughan
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Gasoline engines are going to be with us a long time and GDI is one of the main reasons why. It's also the reason why E85 ethanol might be even more attractive as a petroleum replacement in the near future. Manufacturers are fiddling with the EMS to get the very most out of the renewable fuel. It's assumed today that a tank of E85 gives you up to 20 per cent less power to the wheels than 100 per cent gasoline. Properly-engineered GDI might go a long way to reducing that gap.
Michael Vaughan
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