John F. Martin for Delphi

The gasoline internal combustion engine has been in service for well over a century at this point. After all that time, you would think we would have perfected it by now. It’s as simple as suck-squeeze-bang-blow, right? But recently we’ve seen a number of new technological advances that each offer significant gains to efficiency—probably a good thing considering how long it is going to take to move to an all-electric light vehicle fleet.

The latest one I’m enthusiastic about was cooked up by Delphi and Tula. Called Dynamic Skip Fire, the new tech should work with most any gasoline engine, boosting fuel efficiency by up to 15 percent.