How adaptive is the Intelligent Engine

[x10]

I've got about 5k miles on my Vibe and I'm the primary driver while I'm not a lead foot, several spots on my trip home and to work, I pull out into moving traffic and have to accelerate quickly to get into traffic. When someone else drives the car they complain of too much low end throttle response and after i got it back over a weekend car exchange the car drove a bit different but quickly came out of it. I guess my question is did I imagine the difference or does the ECM track drivers habits and try to keep the driver happy like the old buick ECM's did or is the Intelligent part of the engine name just a marketing gimmick ????????????????

[NibCrom]

Well, perhaps it was just my imagination, but with my Vibe and my previous vehicle (Oldsmobile Alero) I found that both cars felt slow when I treated the car very gently but if I drove them harder they would feel more peppy. I don't know if that's just my driving habit, a characteristic of the four cylinder engine or perhaps just my imagination.

[Petrucci914]

Well, you have to understand that with a lot of foreign cars, and 4-Cylinder engines in general, you have very little lowend torque and you get most of your power on the high-end. So at times you will really need to rev it up to get going.

[Daox]

As far as I know, the engine ECU does not 'adapt' to a specific driver at all. The engine is tuned to run at peak performance for every instance that it is programmed for. With increasingly stringent emissions regulations this is more important as the engine needs to run clean. Not that you would really want it to adapt anyway. A cleaner burning engine is actually a more effecient engine (generally speaking).

[x10]

I have to kindly disagree with you on the statement. "cleaner burning engine is actually a more effecient engine (generally speaking)."I work for a major diesel manufacture and am very familiar with what were doing to make 2007 and 2010 emissions. Right now with EGR and other methods of meeting emissions it is costing you and me extreme amounts of Efficiency. depending on whats happening with the engine (air temp, fuel temp, Amb air press., Ect) there is fuel used just to cool or heat the combustion chamber. The EPA is costing you and me thousands of dollars every year, Every product you buy and every mile you drive the EPA is costing us money. My question was really based on one of the features that our ECM's have where we give the drivers more power and top end if they drive within certain parameters.

[Daox]

lol, I knew I was going to get flak for that. Thats why I said generally speaking. I just mean a better tuned engine is going to put out more power, use more of the gasoline's energy, and emit less polution. Poorly designed engines require energy robbing devices such as EGR systems because they do not run as effeciently. Thats not intended as a derogitory statement to you or your work, its just a limitation of our current technology in most cases. For example you mention fuel enrichment for cooling the combustion chamber down. This is due to limitations of our technology. If we had the technology to harness that extra heat energy the engine would run cleaner and be more effecient. That is what I meant by "cleaner burning engine is actually a more effecient engine (generally speaking)." Since we do not have the technology to harness that extra heat we have to use other methods to cope with it to reduce emissions. As you mentioned these methods usually cost a nice amount of coin and usually do cost us effeciency as well.

[x10]

Ill let you slide, the give and take on engines today is very very complex, Its taking new uncharted tech to make 2010 and real hard to make 2013, but were working on itMy question about the ecm learning i guess has been answered, I hope I'm still writing about my vibe in another 175000 miles