Fitting a gasoline-powered car engine with frikkin' laser spark plugs may seem like one sci-fi step too far, but since it improves the combustion and cleans-up the exhaust, it may be the gas engine's last gasp before the electric revolution comes. The design of the spark plug really hasn't changed very much since the gasoline engine was invented--they're a device that creates an electric spark across a very precise small gap to ignite the fuel mixture in each cylinder, and apart from improving their materials and reliability there's not much you can do to tweak that. The problem with spark plugs is that they're not particularly good at their raison d'être.
Read More »