Toyota unveils new petrol engines and plans to reduce dependency on robots in assembly plants

Toyota has revealed a new family of 1-litre and 1.3-litre petrol engines, in both three-cylinder and four-cylinder layouts which it claims will allow it to offer the usual engineering holy grail of improved performance but with reduced consumption and emissions. What marks these engines out is the fact that they are Toyota's first non-hybrid units to use the so-called Atkinson Cycle.

The Atkinson Cycle essentially allows the engine’s intake valves to remain open during combustion, apparently improving the breathing qualities of the unit. The downside has traditionally been reduced torque and therefore more sluggish performance. Toyota gets around that in its hybrids by using electric power to cover the gaps in the torque curve.

These new engines, though, will be used in cars with no hybrid assistance, giving Toyota nowhere to hide in engineering terms. Toyota claims to have sidestepped the problem by increasing the compression ratio while improving the speed of combustion to avoid knock or pinking. The new units are so efficient that Toyota claims they are on a par with its hybrid units, and not a battery in sight.

Meanwhile, in spite of the technological advances of its new engines, Toyota is apparently going to reduce its dependency on machines and robots when building its cars and start putting more of the human touch back into the process.

It’s something that Lexus has been doing for some time now, reckoning that the trained human eye and hand can actually be better than a robot, but the theory now seems to be expanding across the wider Toyota group.

Speaking to Bloomberg News, senior Toyota engineer Mitsuri Kawai said: "We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them. When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.

“We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again. To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.”