Hybrids and electric cars are generating the buzz this week at Detroit's North American International Auto Show.
But thanks to new technology, the century-old internal-combustion engine appears poised to make a significant leap in fuel efficiency.
While car makers are showcasing gas-electric hybrids, plug-in hybrids and concept cars powered by fuel-cell batteries,
they also are rolling out vehicles with advanced gasoline engines that rely on a technology known as direct fuel injection.
Analysts say sales of vehicles with such engines -- which deliver greater fuel economy and power than today's similarly sized gas engines -- will far exceed those of hybrids and electrics for years to come.
U.S. sales of hybrids will rise to 578,000 by 2014 from 353,000 this year, according to CSM Worldwide.
But the forecasting firm projects that sales of vehicles using direct-injection gas engines will jump to 5.1 million by 2014 from 585,000 this year.
Globally, hybrid, plug-in and battery-only vehicles will capture about 14% of the automotive market by 2020, according to IHS Global Insight, another forecasting firm.
"Leaping to a new technology is really a big risk," said Eric Fedewa, CSM's vice president of global powertrain forecasting. "
It's much more cost effective and much less risk to do something to an existing, proven technology."
All auto makers are under pressure to boost fuel economy to meet stricter governmental standards. But consumers are fickle when it comes to buying superefficient vehicles.
Sales of Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius, the best-known hybrid, zoomed last year when gas prices hit $4 a gallon in the U.S. But now, with gas costing less than half that,
Toyota has seen Prius sales slow dramatically and it recently mothballed a U.S. factory slated to build the model.
One big hurdle hybrids face is higher sticker prices, often thousands of dollars more than the same model with a traditional engine.
It takes years for a customer to earn back this cost through gas savings.
Early this decade, car makers looked to the diesel engine for better mileage. But in the U.S., many turned away from that strategy for passenger cars as the cost of making diesel engines "clean" increased by thousands of dollars per vehicle after federal environmental regulations tightened. Also, diesel fuel costs more than gasoline.
The internal-combustion engine "will likely remain the backbone of mobility for the foreseeable future," said Daimler AG Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche.
He said his company has been able to improve the efficiency of gas and diesel engines by about 23% and "there is still further to go."
At the car show, BMW AG displayed hybrid concepts of its 7-Series and X6 models that combine V8 engines with a two-mode hybrid to deliver a 20% improvement in fuel economy. But the German maker also expects it could still get up to a 10% improvement in fuel economy with tweaks to its existing lineup of gasoline engines, said Klaus Draeger, a member of BMW's executive board.
Leading the way are direct-injection engines, which take highly pressurized fuel and thrust it squarely into the combustion chamber of each cylinder. By contrast, traditional engines first mix fuel with incoming air before reaching the combustion chamber, which is less efficient.
Car maker say the advantages of direct injection are lower emissions, better performance and greater fuel efficiency.
Ford Motor Co. rolled out its EcoBoost direct-injection technology, which promises greater performance while offering as much as a 20% increase in fuel economy over the same-size traditional engine. It will first be available later this year in the Ford Flex seven-passenger crossover wagon. By 2012, Ford expects to produce 750,000 EcoBoost vehicles annually world-wide, said Derrick Kuzak, Ford's global vice president for product development.
The company argues the premium for EcoBoost -- a price Ford has not disclosed -- is a better value than a hybrid or diesel. Mr. Kuzak said that, assuming a gallon of gas is $3 or less, it would take 12 to 18 months to see the cost savings of owning an EcoBoost vehicle. The equivalent for a hybrid, he said, is five to seven years and as long as a decade for diesel at current prices.
At General Motors Corp., 38 models will use direct-injection engines by next year, totaling about 10% of its global production. "On the journey to electrification of vehicles, we think we're going to need to make significant improvements in gasoline engines," said Sam Winegarden, GM's executive director of engineering.
GM and other makers are also trying to develop a gas engine using a technology called homogenous-charge compression-ignition, or HCCI. The technology is believed capable of providing as much as a 30% boost in fuel economy by burning gas faster at lower temperatures and reducing some of the energy lost during the combustion process.
"HCCI would be the next logical extension of improving the gas engine," Mr. Winegarden said, adding that HCCI is likely to hit the market within the next 10 years.
Major auto makers expect to sell a variety of vehicle technologies, but offer most models with gasoline engines. "
I don't think one technology will outdate another. They'll layer," said Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA.
Much of the electrification strategy touted by auto makers counts on hefty incentives, including tax breaks to make buying a hybrid or battery-powered car easier on consumers' wallets. Without such incentives, the costs of creating a robust electric- and hybrid-car market will be prohibitively high, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group.
Even many environmentalists say that improving the gas engine is a good near-term solution. "There is no silver bullet -- we need a silver buckshot," said Luke Tonachel, vehicles analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We need cars that go further on less gas. We'll need to embrace all of the technology."
—Kate Linebaugh and Jeff Bennett contributed to this article.
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