internal combustion engine
nounDefinition of internal combustion engine
: a heat engine in which the combustion that generates the heat takes place inside the engine proper instead of in a furnace
Examples of internal combustion engine in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Electric cars actually predate the internal combustion engine, and have been around since before the US Civil War. — Gene Berdichevsky For Cnn Business Perspectives, CNN, "The electric car revolution will require us to build better batteries," 14 Aug. 2019 By 1917, there were only 50,000 electric vehicles registered, compared with 3.5 million internal combustion engine cars. — Dan Albert, Vox, "Driverless cars are coming. We’ll miss the thrill of the ride.," 21 June 2019 The same goes for other prewar land speed record challengers with their rubber tires and internal combustion engines. — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, "Bloodhound SSC: How do you build a car capable of 1,000mph?," 24 Nov. 2018 Instead of an internal combustion engine, each axle sports its own asynchronous electric motor, each of which features a cooling lance running through it. — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, "We’ve driven Audi’s first proper electric car, the 2019 e-tron SUV," 7 Dec. 2018 The internal combustion engine is under attack from electric challengers. — Jack Ewing, New York Times, "The Car Industry Is Under Siege," 6 June 2019 Only in countries such as Norway, where generous perks and tax breaks have made electrics financially irresistible, is the internal combustion engine being meaningfully displaced by electrics. — Michael J. Coren, Quartz, "Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting ran on pure, high-octane optimism," 12 June 2019 Just like an internal combustion engine, the electric motor generates a lot of power-sapping heat. — Matthew Jancer, Popular Mechanics, "Speaking of Spokes: The Design That Could Change How Electric Car Motors Are Made," 20 Nov. 2018 Cities around the world, but especially in Europe, have begun to shun internal combustion engines in favor of boosting air quality for residents. — Sean O'kane, The Verge, "Aston Martin will make old cars electric so they don’t get banned from cities," 6 Dec. 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'internal combustion engine.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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