KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 15 ­—The engine is literally the heart of any vehicle, and although the entire drive train, which includes the transmission and driving gear play a part, the engine itself takes on a major role in providing power to a vehicle.

While the engine must have sufficient power to move the vehicle, the designers also need to look at the fuel consumption, reliability and durability.

The people at Mazda believe that although the Internal Combustion engine (ICE) has been around for more than a century, there is still a lot of potential in it, and in the development of the SKYACTIV technology that is now in most of the Mazda range of vehicles, they started with a clean sheet of paper.

The result is clearly seen in Mazda’s SKYACTIV range of vehicles — the Mazda 2, Mazda 3, Mazda 6, CX-3, CX-5, the Mazda Biante, Mazda MX-5, and very soon we will see the Mazda CX-9.

What is unique about the Mazda SKYACTIV-G (gasoline) engine is its hitherto unheard of, incredibly high compression ratio of 14:1.

Most of the gasoline engines in operation around the world run at around 10:1 compression ratio, while some higher performance engines go as high as 11:1, and in order for them to function properly, they need very expensive high octane fuels.

Watch the accompanying video in which a Mazda engineer explains how Mazda developed the SKYACTIV-G engine.