Honda Surprises All With New Engines & Transmissions

Good to see Honda finally catching up with Chrysler in engine technology.

^^^ good one. The 3.5 gets a nice update but I'm unmpressed with the inline 4's. The get a small bump in torque and probably a little more FE but not much else. Either way across the board Honda is not taking the lead with the new updates. They're still settling for "good enough."

GM started rolling out Direct Injection in.. what, 2004? Start-Stop (generation 1 eAssist) in 2008? Cylinder deactivation first in 1980 and then again in 2004.

Took long enough.....

GM started rolling out Direct Injection in.. what, 2004? Start-Stop (generation 1 eAssist) in 2008? Cylinder deactivation first in 1980 and then again in 2004.

Honda started using DI in Japan around '02-'03, had Auto-stop in 2001, and they have been practicing cylinder size-reduction since the beginning... lol

and none of that, other than small displacement, made it to their largest market..... why?

All their past and current hybrids have had the auto-stop (which actually started in 2000 with gen1 Insights). Now, I know the hybrids aren't quite high volume, they are all available in the US. Honda has also been using VCM (variable cylinder management) more and more, starting in around '05-'06.

Those things aside, i'm just as baffled as you when it comes to the neglect of DI stateside. I really shouldn't attempt to answer based upon my complete uncertainty, but the only thing that I could think of is perhaps prolonged R&D, while thinking they could leave well enough alone...? I don't know off-hand, but I'm sure they have been implementing it in something over the years, and fine tuning.

Why the reliance on 5-speed autos while the rest of the industry moved on to 6-speeds and greater? It's not like their 5-speeds are all that good in the first place, they've had reliability problems with the early ones and they've never really been smooth.

They are beginning the transition to 6-speeds for the heavy vehicles, as evident in the higher end models (Acuras and top Odyssey), but it seems for the rest of the range they are working to develop and build up their CVTs. Maybe not the most sound choice, speculatively, but that seems to be getting the blunt end of their R&D attention right now. All these things are just a matter of free speculation to me...

Here is a more comprehensive article on Autoblog, which highlights their planned efficiency dominance.

http://www.autoblog....gment-within-t/

This is about as interesting as the new Kenmore refrigerator getting the energy star sticker.

This is about as interesting as the new Kenmore refrigerator getting the energy star sticker.

Rarely do we agree, but when we do... we do.