I found some interesting engine tear down videos

[TJ Hopland]

Along the same lines but not from this guy I have recently seen some videos explaining other 'modern features' we get to deal with now.  One of them is oil pumps are designed to just barely have enough flow and pressure for a new engine.  If they designed them to have a little reserve capacity that would cause extra drag.  Same deal with 'wet belts' which are belts in places where they are fully exposed to engine oil. 

The fuel economy savings to the end user are tiny, based on one guys math less than $20 savings per year but if you are say a large manufacturer selling 10's of thousands of units this adds up and counts to your average.  So what if the engine won't make it to 100k and its too complicated to repair so you have to throw the whole car away..... what are you going to do buy a whole new car?   Oh wait...... 

[James Landi]

The definition of "durable goods" :"goods not for immediate consumption and able to be kept for a period of time."

"  So what if the engine won't make it to 100k and it's too complicated to repair so you have to throw the whole car away..... what are you going to do buy a whole new car?   Oh wait...... " T.J,  All great points...

Percentage of folks buying new cars is low...  about 5.3% of the population ; the majority of Americans keep their cars for 8 years. Planned Obsolescence is part of the manufacturer's design. One man's observation --- Cars produced before the dawn of highly advanced technology being added to cars are less likely to wind up in the junk yard because they are "mechanically totalled."   

[TJ Hopland]

Active oil pump management also seems to be a somewhat common thing.  The common implementation looks to be a variable displacement setup.  I can't tell if the control is some sort of servo or if its a valve and it uses the oil pressure to act on the pump and do its thing. 

I can only assume that this again is all to reduce the load the pump is putting on things.  A typical spring regulator is just wasting the energy that it took to produce that volume/pressure that now just get bypassed so making it active they can just adjust the pump so its just generating what is required.

I wonder if engines with the variable cam timing and cylinder deactivation need a lot more oil when those systems are doing their thing?  I wouldn't think so but if they did I suppose it could be handy to ramp up the pump power before you activate that stuff and consume some oil?   

I have seen some signs that some engines have active management of their 'piston squirters' so that too could be a place where maybe you crank up the power before you turn those on.  Those are little nozzles that squirt oil on the bottom of the pistons for additional cooling and would certainly 'consume' a decent volume of oil.   All the above systems used to be only found on a few specific engines but I think now days are all pretty standard even on an 'econo box'.

I wonder how reliable these management systems are?  And what are the failure modes?  Assuming a mechanical failure you would hope they fail to full power?  What if its electrical?  What if its the oil pressure switch and the computer thinks pressure is too high?

All this stuff is kinda neat and I'm sure there are people that are more than happy to pay to have something that may be expensive to maintain and may not be that reliable just for the tiny gains or bragging rights but all these complexities are also on your basic transport models too.   I'd really like to see the big picture numbers that prove we are at a net gain.  It sure seems like the little we are saving in the economy/emissions front are likely being over done by the higher failure rates sending the whole car to scrap and needed to be replaced sooner.