The supercharged 25-hp XTS-210 rotary engine is intended to fill a gap on the mobile power market. Credit: LiquidPiston LiquidPiston has launched a 25-hp heavy-fuel rotary engine that could power ...

Rotary engines (also known as Wankel engines and Wankel rotary engines) are quite different from piston or "reciprocating" engines. One of the distinguishing features is that they don't need valves to ...

When I wrote about Mazda’s attempt to create the perfect range extender, I mentioned I wanted to examine the ideas that seem to be closer to that goal. Unfortunately, the Japanese company’s attempt ...

Pop the hood on a classic Mazda RX-7 or RX-8 and the engine bay looks oddly empty. That is the charm of the rotary engine: a compact lump of metal that trades pistons and valves for a spinning ...

For a time, the Wankel rotary engine seemed like the future. In 1963, German automaker NSU—later absorbed into Audi—debuted the Wankel Spider, the first internal-combustion production car not powered ...

In a world dominated by pistons, the rotary engine was something different for motorists. It was the vision of German engineer Felix Wankel, built on the belief that the up-and-down motion of pistons ...