Microwaves to increase fuel efficiency?

A company called Dana Corporation has developed a way to improve fuel efficiency in combustion engines by using microwaves to initiate combustion.

Dana Corporation

As part of Dana's proprietary process, a synchronized microwave source feeds short microwave pulses into the engine through a modified spark plug to ignite the fuel/air mixture. No additional modifications are required to run the engine. The modified spark plug not only ignites the fuel/air mixture, but also radiates microwave energy into the cylinder for enhanced, more complete combustion to improve efficiency. The presence of the microwave field during the combustion process can also modify chemical reactions to reduce engine emissions.

"This recent application of Dana's AtmoPlas technology is just the latest of many exciting possibilities we have discovered for this program," said Chuck Heine, president of Technology Development at Dana. "This novel method for using microwave energy to enhance fuel ignition has the potential to substantially change the internal combustion engine."

They don'y say just how much this technology will improve efficiency but it sounds promising.

VERY interesting...I have shared this link with some acquaintances of mine who know far more about this than I do. I will post anything interesting they have to say about it.

I kind of like not being near Radiation as much as that is possible. Perhaps we could all just have battery cars? Ok, so they dont do 150mph down the highway, but hell.. it gets you from A to B.. and as Johnny says, if you're important enough, people will wait.

It you take into account the fact that you have to generate the microwaves somehow, you're total energy consumption is higher than if you were only using gas...

BitRasker: Good point, but that's not true if you can use an engine to generate electricity from waist heat which is easily done (e.g. the engines cooler). Also its not true if the energy you save is more than you gain; currently cars waist about 40% of their energy.
But it is true for battery cars (in my opinion the most stupid environmental idea of all time). This is because the national grid is only just over 30% efficent and so that's your starting rate. Then you have to charge, decharge as well as carry the battery (all of which costs energy).
As most electricity is from fossil fuels a battery powerd car would be very bad for the environment unless our efficency rates dramatically improved, or if more came from non-fossil fuel sources (e.g. nuclear).

It also takes a crap load of energy to create microwaves so really it would waste energy in the long run.
,HVF