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This is a nifty exhaust waste-heat recovery scheme. The third cylinder is a heat engine that happens to share a crankshaft with the other two. You could do something similar with a divorced cylinder whose intake valve is attached to your exhaust. The fact that it isn't already done by long haul trucks tells me that the amount of energy recovered is too small to justify the cost and complexity of the system. I hope it works out and we see this technology in everyday cars, but "claims that efficiency gains of between 5% and 20% can be had" is a far cry from "have demonstrated efficiency gains of 5-20%".
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