Image Gallery: Engines Image Gallery: Engines  Image Gallery:
Engines Most major car manufacturers make or plan to soon make
gasoline cars with direct injection engines, such as GM’s Ecotec
engine. See more pictures of engines.  © 2009 General Motors
What kind of engine will propel your next car or truck? If
you've been toying around with the idea of buying a diesel for
its fuel economy (try nearly 50 mpg for the Volkswagen Jetta
TDI), well, you may not need to give up on the trusted and
familiar gasoline engine just yet.  That's because one of the
technologies that makes diesels so miserly on fuel is coming to
gasoline engines, too. It's called direct injection, and it
refers to how the fuel makes its way inside an engine's
controlled-explosion room, better known as a combustion chamber.
In a garden-variety gasoline engine with fuel injection,
gasoline takes a more roundabout route than it does with the
direct injection method. This indirect approach causes all
manner of inefficiencies in burning the fuel,