Do you know how cars actually drive?
Even if you know little to none about cars, you at least know your car needs fuel to accelerate… and you’ve most probably heard of a phrase, ‘fuel injection’. But, how does your car actually drive? We use these ‘magical driving machines’ daily, so it might be important to know how they work.
Firstly, older cars used a carburetor to accelerate, and therefore drive. A carburetor is the part that mixes the right amount of fuel with the right amount of air, ensuring an engine runs properly. However, unless your car is really, really old, it won’t have a carburetor. Carburetors simply weren’t capable of doing all the things modern engines have to do to provide maximum fuel efficiency and limit carbon emissions. These days cars have fuel injection systems.
This is what happens when you hit the petrol pedal with your foot:
-The accelerator pedal is connected to a throttle valve, which lets air into the engine. Stepping on the pedal lets more air into your engine.
-The computer that controls your engine (the Engine Control Unit or ECU) senses that you’ve increased their air flow and immediately increases the flow of fuel through the fuel injector valve.
-Pressurised fuel squirts out through a nozzle that turns it into a fine mist that will burn easily.
-The amount of fuel supplied depends on how long the fuel injector stays open.
-The ECU has sensors to monitor the air entering the engine and the oxygen in the exhaust to fine tune the fuel delivery.
However, all cars don’t run on fuel anymore, here we explain how hybrid cars work.