English company shows V10 hybrid sports car

The directors of Connaught are now seeking further investment to raise the £5 million required to take the project through to production in May 2006.

www.connaughtmotorco.com

The engine

The all-aluminium, ultra-compact, 2110cc V10 engine is packed with innovative features.

The vee-angle is just 22.5 degrees, which makes the engine narrow and gives good balance with even firing intervals. The wet cylinder liners mate directly with the cylinder head, with no gasket, and other components are sealed with rubber where necessary.

The crankshaft is pressed together from 22 components, and fed into the block from one end. Its webs double as very large main-bearing journals, but the bearing surface is very slender to keep friction down.

The pistons have ceramic crowns, to reduce the heat transfer to the block that would otherwise be the V10 configuration's biggest snag given a cylinder surface-to-volume ratio much higher than that of, say, a four-cylinder engine. Future developments could include V8 and V12 versions of the engine.

For a rapid warm-up and maximum efficiency, the cylinder head has its own water-cooling circuit. When the block needs to be cooled as well, an interconnecting valve opens to unite the cooling circuits, pumped by an electric water pump as required.

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