#InternalCombustionEngine

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the latest European leader to call for the death of the internal combustion engine.

With countries the world over looking to ban internal combustion engines in city centers and tech geeks getting all gung-ho about Tesla, you may think fossil fuels are on the way out, but you’d be wrong. Very wrong.

For the last number of years, automakers have been pushing gas-electric products at auto shows across the world. However, according to researcher LMC Automotive, hybrid sales in the United States have slowed last year to 2.2 percent compared to 2.4 percent in 2010.

Intake. Compression. Ignition. Exhaust. The four holy stages of the internal combustion engine. Anyone who’s ever taken shop class or watched a cheesy automotive promo video will have seen some kind of illustration or poorly rendered CGI of the inner workings of a piston engine.

For the first time, someone has stuck an actual camera inside a four-stroke engine. Shooting at roughly 1000 frames per second, see it all, from the intake being sucked into the combustion chamber, to the compression and exhaust strokes of the piston, to the moment where the spark plugs ignite that wonderful mixture of air and fuel.  It’s enough to turn even the most hardened green activist into an automotive evangelist.

[Source: Gizmodo]

See the video after the jump: