Mercedes-Benz launched their E 220 d yesterday with the tag of being the first passenger car with a diesel engine that uses the stepped-bowl combustion process (named after the shape of the combustion bowl). The carmaker revealed that this motor uses a unique combination of an aluminium engine block with steel pistons.
Mercedes-Benz claims that this engine gets a ‘NANOSLIDE’ coating on the cylinder walls, which helps reduce the use of grey cast iron by approximately 1,000 tonnes, and of aluminium by approximately 8,000 tonnes per year. NANOSLIDE is an economical process for lowering fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in combustion engines.
This technology uses twin-wire arc spraying (TWAS) to coat the cylinder's inner surfaces with a thin film of an iron-carbon alloy that has a mirror-smooth surface. Thanks to this coating, it helps reduce friction in the cylinder by up to 50 per cent.
