Why New Cars Are Using Both Direct & Port Fuel Injection

Electronic fuel injection has been around for a long time, much longer than most would think. First making its appearance in a mass-produced role the late 60s, it’s surprising that automakers haven’t figured out how to perfect the technology yet. Don’t get us wrong, where cars are sitting today is nothing short of amazing. The people behind them have made great strides to achieve optimal efficiency. However, all of these years later, fuel injected applications are still improving with each and every generation of vehicle. I’m sure that there’s still a lot to learn!

Since the dawn of its time, fuel injection is certainly a technology that we have seen change plenty. According to our host here at Engineering Explained, after the days of carburetion being the most common form of fuel delivery, we have seen fuel injection change from port injection to direct injection and subsequently, both at the same time. As it turns out, while digging into the engineering, we’re able to see that there are advantages to each one of these styles of fuel injection. It’s no wonder that some automakers have chosen to go with both of them at the same time.

The video below gives us the rundown of how exactly fuel injection has become the precise science that it is. It’s crazy how efficient the technology has become, aiming at stretching the most out of one’s fuel. There are a lot of factors that people might not even think of when it comes to how fuel injection works. Some of these might include cooling, pressure, and the time to mix to promote combustion stability. Let’s just say that there are a lot of different metrics that are changing at once. This one is a little bit more complicated than simply spraying fuel. Actually, it’s a lot more complicated!