On: Mazda’s rotary engine in the age of the electric c...

[jsight]

Low end torque tends to be the rotary's Achilles heel. I think the claim being made is that efficiency is better at high, steady RPMs, but tbh, I've always found that claim a bit dubious. If you love the rotary engine, this does have some nice perks as the electric motor basically fixes the rotary engine's main weakness.

Having said that, I'd have been much more excited about this 10-15 years ago.

[lostlogin → jsight]

It fixes the terrible efficiency by having an entirely different power source?

As others have pointed out, the article doesn’t do a great job of explaining how the rotary helps.

[ianai → jsight]

A YTer said it allows the rotary engine to operate in its best circumstances. It’s essentially a range extender while battery tech improves.

[suprjami → jsight]

It really isn't. Go and drive a 13BT car. They make almost all their torque by 2500rpm and the curve is flat. They're more torquey than any 4 cylinder I've driven.

[jsight → suprjami]

I've owned an RX-7 and an RX-8. They definitely didn't have flat torque curves. Even the twin sequential setup on the FC was far from flat.

But even if it was, that was the most powerful stock configuration made and it topped out at ~184 lb/ft. :)

Torque was never the strength of this motor.

[suprjami → jsight]

I had a turbo FC and beg to differ. A dyno graph of a stock car also begs to differ.

[jsight → suprjami]

Dyno graphs aren't consistent with that:

https://www.google.com/imgres?q=1993%20stock%20rx-7%20dyno&i...

They are fun engines, but low end torque just isn't their thing.