As we all know, American brands have a special love for three-cylinder engines, such as Ford, Buick, Chevrolet, there are many three-cylinder engine models, and even on its classic models, it also uses three-cylinder engines. In contrast, independent brands and Japanese brands are relatively cautious about three-cylinder engines.
Toyota and Honda, for example, are quite clever, although cars including Corolla, Ralink and Lingpai have launched three-cylinder versions, but they have basically retained the four-cylinder version of the model, so that consumers still have choice. In the independent brand, the three-cylinder engine is also the Geely family, but Geely has not promoted the three-cylinder engine on a large scale like Buick and Chevrolet.
The three-cylinder machine destroyed the American brand
With the passage of time, the early large-scale three-cylinder engines were all dismal sales, and American brands such as Ford, Buick, and Chevrolet were directly destroyed by three-cylinder engines. Taking Ford as an example, from 2012 to 2014, Changan Ford Focus won the annual sales championship of domestic cars for three consecutive years, and even in 2017, it can still maintain more than 10,000 monthly sales.
However, in 2018, Changan Ford released the fourth-generation Focus, and after the fourth-generation Fox was equipped with a standard three-cylinder engine, it directly reduced the Focus to a marginal model, and the sales volume hovered around 2,000 vehicles all year round, which was strongly compared with the annual sales of up to 390,000 vehicles. X-Trail Glory is even more embarrassing, because the new generation of X-Trail has adopted a three-cylinder engine, resulting in a plummeting sales, and it has to re-produce the four-cylinder old X-Trail to alleviate the pressure brought by sales.
Fortunately, Ford has finally reacted, and this year's fourth-generation Focus is about to achieve a mid-term redesign, and the most obvious change is that the new car will be equipped with a 1.5T four-cylinder engine. It is reported that the 1.5T four-cylinder engine code-named CAF479WQ6 is actually based on the optimization of the previous generation of 1.5T engine, with a maximum power of 130kW, which is only 2kW higher than the current three-cylinder engine. However, it is bound to make Fox return to the peak in sales.
In fact, the first reaction to the three-cylinder engine has no way out is Buick Yinglang, once Buick also for The Yinglang all series of standard three-cylinder engines, but watching the deterioration of sales, forced to re-install the 1.5L four-cylinder engine in 2020, Since then Yinglang has returned to the mainstream sedan ranks, sales have long been among the top in the car market.
Interestingly, the four-cylinder Yinglang is actually not more powerful than the three-cylinder model in terms of performance, and the maximum horsepower of the Yinglang 1.3T three-cylinder model reaches 163Ps, while the maximum horsepower of the four-cylinder Yinglang is only 113Ps. That is, the consumer's focus is not on performance, but on the number of cylinders.
A variety of three-cylinder cars will be a thing of the past
Seeing that the three-cylinder engine has no way out at all, many car companies have begun to abandon the three-cylinder engine this year, in addition to the Fox mentioned above, including Chevrolet Chuangku, Geely ICON, Binyue, Binrui and other models will also be equipped with four-cylinder engines, and have completed the declaration in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
As more and more car companies abandon the three-cylinder engine, no car brand will dare to easily try the three-cylinder engine in the future. The three-cylinder engine not only has a congenital jitter problem, but it is indeed inferior to the four-cylinder engine in the actual driving experience.
Take the 1.5T three-cylinder engine equipped with the new generation of X-Trail as an example, which uses a lot of Nissan black technology, and its performance parameters are not inferior to the same displacement 1.5T four-cylinder engine, which is not exaggerated. However, in the actual driving experience, if the speed is within 100km/h, the basic feeling is not the difference with the four-cylinder engine, but after the speed of more than 100km/h, the gap between the three-cylinder engine and the four-cylinder engine is very obvious, and who knows who knows the feeling of powerlessness. This is still the case with Nissan's three-cylinder engines, not to mention other three-cylinder engines.
In addition, with the rise of independent hybrid technology led by BYD, traditional fuel vehicles are also accelerating downhill, and the best choice for buying a car at the moment has been transformed into a hybrid vehicle with low fuel consumption, which directly makes the three-cylinder engine have no possibility of turning over. In the future, the three-cylinder engine will exist more in the form of a range extender, such as the ideal ONE and the Geely Star Yue L Thor Hi · X oil-electric hybrid version.
Write at the end:
Although the three-cylinder engine has various shortcomings and is not welcomed, in the era of electrification, in the field of hybridization and range extender, the three-cylinder engine can achieve the advantages and avoid the shortcomings, which can avoid the problem of jitter, but also control the cost, volume and emissions. Therefore, combined with the hybrid system, it is the only way out for the three-cylinder engine.
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