VIDEO: MAZDA'S NEW HCCI ENGINE!

Mazda has created the holy grail of all engines – and here's a breakdown of the compression-ignition SKYACTIVE-X engine...

Mazda calls it "Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030." The man Engineering Explained, Jason Fenske, thinks that sounds a bit silly – but the technology involved definitely isn't. 

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is a form of combustion that (similar to diesel) doesn't require a spark. The compression alone ignites the fuel/air mixture way more efficiently than a traditional gasoline engine. It's also cleaner than sooty, nitrous-oxide-plagued diesels. 

Mazda names it SkyActiv-X... The first production HCCI engine. 

Fenske saw one major challenge to pulling this off: "There's a narrow temperature range inside that cylinder for compression to have ignition to occur at the exact moment you want it to occur."

However, Mazda solved this problem by adding a spark plug to use under non-ideal circumstances. This introduces the second problem... how to transition between using compression to ignite it and using a spark plug to ignite that fuel/air mixture.

However, Mazda has solved that too!

To find out more about this holy grail of engines, here is a video on the Mazda HCCI technology, going into production in 2019.