The horizontally opposed engine (aka flat N) is nothing new. More specifically I know it has been in Honda motorcycles since the 1970's. Cars and other devices likely too but I have no first hand knowledge of that.
Here they are giving it a new name and say they can reduce the amount of moving parts by 50%. There is no information on what "parts" they are removing which I would find to be the most interesting piece of information. The comparison of two and four strokes engines is also misleading.
After a quick dig:
If you go to eco's website they specifically say this is a two stroke engine; the article linked has incorrect information.
They are reducing the amount of parts because they are using a two stroke instead of a four cycle.
It seems the only real cool part of this engine, to me, is that it is designed "modular," it should be more cost effective to add on additional cylinders instead of having multiple facilities dedicated to different configurations.
Flat configurations have been used in cars and motorcycles for decades.
Huh? The article mentioned it was a two-stroke engine:
"But that’s only part of the story--the OPOC engine also features a two-stroke design. The benefit here is that a two-stroke engine delivers a power pulse with every revolution of the crankshaft, as opposed to the four-stroke engine which fires each cylinder on every other revolution."
The type of engine you are referring to is called a 'boxer', and it has been in use in many other places from well before Honda ever used it.
Most notably in motorcycles probably the BMW brand, in car engines there was the Citroen 2CV and the VW beetle as well as many others, but that's not the same kind of engine as the one depicted in the article.
Here they are giving it a new name and say they can reduce the amount of moving parts by 50%. There is no information on what "parts" they are removing which I would find to be the most interesting piece of information. The comparison of two and four strokes engines is also misleading.
After a quick dig: If you go to eco's website they specifically say this is a two stroke engine; the article linked has incorrect information.
They are reducing the amount of parts because they are using a two stroke instead of a four cycle.
It seems the only real cool part of this engine, to me, is that it is designed "modular," it should be more cost effective to add on additional cylinders instead of having multiple facilities dedicated to different configurations.
Flat configurations have been used in cars and motorcycles for decades.