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The reduction of fuel consumption is of great importance to automobile manufacturers. As a prospective means to achieve fuel economy, lean burn is being investigated at various research organizations and automobile manufacturers and a number of studies on lean-burn technology have been reported to this date. This paper describes the development of a four-valve lean-burn engine; especially the improvement of the combustion, the development of an engine management system, and the achievement of vehicle test results. Major themes discussed in this paper are (1) the improvement of brake-specific fuel consumption under partial load conditions and the achievement of high output power by adopting an optimized swirl ratio and a variable-swirl system with a specially designed variable valve timing and lift mechanism, (2) the development of an air-fuel ratio control system, (3) the improvement of fuel economy as a vehicle and (4) an approach to satisfy the NOx emission standard.

In recent years, many papers have dealt with the demand responsive bus system as a promising new transportation system for urban and suburban areas. In this paper, the authors show the algorithms of a demand bus system that is able to control trips from many origins to many destinations and their simulation techniques. A case study of this system in a newly developed Japanese residential area is illustrated. From an investigation of the case study results, this system seems to be applicable. The authors have developed a digital, fully automatic communication and control system and a bus body design for the implementation of demand bus service. An outline is described in the latter part of the paper.