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Originally Posted by RealityRacer
Thanks for that. So with room for 80% improvement which would bring us to an impossible 100% efficiency, what are we not focused on engine efficiency? Even if we improve combustion to 40% efficiency, we can double MPG. Why aren't we doing this?
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Read the comment above, it answers your question.
Engine efficiency has continually been improved for over a century. The low hanging fruit (the easy stuff) has already been done, meaning every subsequent improvement is much more difficult. As an aside, combustion efficiency is somewhere around 40% now.
Diminishing returns applies to absolutely everything in the universe. Training to reduce a mile run from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes is relatively easy. Cutting it in half again to 5 minutes is extremely difficult and saves even less overall time in the process. It's 10x harder and yields half as much improvement.
"There are no solutions, only trade-offs" -Sowell