Your absolutely right, you can always count on it taking longer than anticipated. People in the 50's thought we would have flying cars by now.......fail.
As for the corvette's magnetic suspension, thats actually old technology. My 87 supra had magnetorheological fluid for damping, not to mention audi started using Delphi's system in the TT BEFORE the corvette. The bill gates arguement is retarded because memory on a computer can always be expanded, not to mention the technology was already there to expand. Freaking lasers in combustion chambers has never existed and i will E bet you $100 bucks you won't see it by 2018. With the way the dollar is going it will be worth $10 by that time though LOL! Im good for it

 

Well time will tell!
The Gates point was simply to note that we cannot predict the path or the speed at which technology will improve. 640kb enough for anybody? It was just years before we had 20x that on a small portable disk... commonplace now to have 1 000 000 000 times that memory in our computers. Moot point overall, but it's the underlying theme I was pointing to.

Ford says they'll try it in a couple years. Maybe they will! I really hope they catch onto the 'frickin laserbeams' thing for the ad campaign.

 

I maintain these for the EOD guys, they deploy a 5 ton HMMWV with this sitting on top, efective to 300 meters. Just saying.

 

I'm just saying that businesses aren't in the business of wasting money -- especially in these times. Of the domestics, Ford is definitely on top these days... and they obviously feel that this has some technological merit, as they continue to pursue it. That may not be the case indefinitely, but I'm thinking they know more about this stuff than we do. Ford may make it happen.

Let's talk about Bose suspension, now. :P

 

lol, that's why they're going bankrupt...

 

According to reports, the lasers require much less energy than traditional spark plugs.

There are also other advantages like increased efficiency, multiple ignition points , and direct cylinder combustion feedback. Maybe Ford sees this as a way to stay on top of the increasing emmisions and mpg standards.

The plan is to use fiber optics to direct the light into the cylinder so the lasers could be stored outside the engine bay.

My biggest concern would be keeping the optics clean.

 

Negative, If you need a laser to ignite something, even something so unstable as a mixture of air and gasoline, it will require at least a concentrated spot of at least 300-600 volts peak and around 200 watts, and like you say for the multiple ignition points, it'll probably be required to be running constantly. Also the multimode fiber can bear light, but not power, so all you get at the end of fiber is just a little light.

 

There is a lot of interesting info online about laser ignition systems.

"The radiation from twelve 808-nm-emitting laser diodes is combined to supply a 15-mJ pulse energy at 6-ns pulse duration, which suffices for most applications. The peak power density reaches approximately 200‑MW/cm2. Focusing the laser beam yields a power density of more than 1012‑W/cm2, sufficient for optical breakdown of air. Laser triggering is controlled by the usual spark-ignition signal; power is provided by the 12-V car battery."

http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/214675

 

that's to ignite one cylinder, typical engineer talk, they'll get you with the smallest numbers. Keep in mind that you'll be spinning the engine with more than one cylinder at several thousand RPMs.

 

Power supply does not appear to be an issue. Unless someone has real evidence that it is?...