In order to cope with more stringent fuel consumption policies and emission policies, probably from 2015, under the leadership of Ford, the domestic automobile market set off a wave of three-cylinder engines, and in the following years, the camp of three-cylinder engines continued to expand, Honda, BMW, General Motors, Peugeot Citroen, Geely, Nissan and other car companies have launched their own three-cylinder models, three-cylinder machines were once regarded as the general trend of the industry. Although consumers at that time were generally disgusted with the three-cylinder engine, the enthusiasm of car companies did not diminish, and it seemed that as long as the technology and market slowly matured, consumers could accept the three-cylinder engine.
However, six or seven years have passed, the attitude of domestic consumers to the three-cylinder engine still has not changed in the slightest, and those car companies that were full of confidence in the three-cylinder engine before have more or less suffered the loss of the three-cylinder engine and have to change back to the four-cylinder machine. GM, Geely's many models have returned to the four-cylinder, the new Honda Civic no longer has a three-cylinder version, Ford Focus will also launch a new model equipped with a four-cylinder engine, for any three-cylinder model, switching back to the four-cylinder machine has become an inevitable choice. So, why does the three-cylinder machine come to an end?
For consumers, the three-cylinder engine has not shown any advantage over the four-cylinder engine, the structure and technical level of the three-cylinder engine is not as good as the four-cylinder engine, which is a well-known fact, in the case of the existing four-cylinder engine technology is highly mature, the three-cylinder engine can not do better than the four-cylinder engine, including stability and reliability. Different from some Western countries, most Chinese families account for a high proportion of family income, in the face of high trial and error costs, consumers do not have to and dare not risk the three-cylinder engine, four-cylinder engine is the wisest choice.
As mentioned earlier, the original intention of the three-cylinder engine is to reduce fuel consumption and emissions, which is also the reason why many car companies are looking for the implementation of the three-cylinder engine, but over the years, it seems that no three-cylinder model has really achieved lower fuel consumption, even if it is the three-cylinder version of toyota Corolla, it can only be equal to the four-cylinder version in terms of fuel consumption. Especially with the rise of new energy vehicles, the so-called energy saving and emission reduction of the three-cylinder machine is even more meaningless, to talk about energy saving and emission reduction, there is no three-cylinder machine at all, hybrid and pure electric minute-by-minute hanging three-cylinder machine, they should be more industry trends.
The only advantage of the three-cylinder engine is the cost, but the cost mentioned here is not the manufacturing cost, but the research and development cost. On the surface, the three-cylinder machine can indeed reduce manufacturing costs, but many three-cylinder models are relying on price reductions to maintain sales, and the little money saved is simply not enough to subsidize the price concessions. Reducing the cost of research and development is the real purpose of car companies, because the three-cylinder machine is not much different from the four-cylinder engine in technology, and the car company uses the existing four-cylinder engine technology to quickly develop a three-cylinder engine to cope with fuel consumption policies and emission policies, which saves money and time.
In the final analysis, the three-cylinder engine is a deformed product of the automotive industry in the transition period from fuel power to new energy power, which was spawned under the pressure of industry policy, and it is also a manifestation of the incompetence of car companies, and the three-cylinder engine will not have a future. Nissan X-Trail is the best illustration, on the one hand, Nissan's self-priming engine technology is old and backward, and it is about to be eliminated, on the other hand, Nissan's new energy power technology layout cannot keep up, so it can only temporarily succumb to the three-cylinder engine, forced to choose, but where there is a better choice, Nissan will not push the General of Qijun into the fire pit.