Why are IGBT's used in ignitions so much?

Was the first solid state regulator used in a generator or alternator?

Regards

The one's I designed were for alternators, IC chip plus a discrete Darlington... assembled on a "lead frame"... if I can find a picture, I'll post.

But I believe there were generator regulators made up of discrete devices, but, IIRC, still used relays to control the field and reverse conduction... the semiconductors just added accuracy to the sensing voltage. ...Jim Thompson

ps

You can use mosfets, A guy I know that design and builds aftermarket ECUs uses irfp450 (afair) for many years. I think he uses ignition igbts now, spec'ced for 5V drive and build in clamp

almost everything now is waste spark with pairs of plugs in series, or coil-on-plug

I haven't seen wasted spark in a long time. Coil-on-plug usually had a personal coil for each plug. Our cars (Mitsubishi Montero Sport and Toyota Corolla) still use one coil and distributor but they are about 20 years old.

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it is only on for a few milliseconds while the current is ramping up every (other) revolution

True but at high rpm it does add up. In automotive they usually skimp on every bit of PCB copper or aluminum.

afaik many VWs use something like this,

two coils and build in driver

Neat. That makes it nice and compact. Since cars don't have hand cranks anymore there won't be less of a chance of a KAPOW out of the exhaust.

They thought the 'I' in IGBT means Ignition. Usually the simplest explanation is best.

All 17 HP, right? [Joerg is clearly a deux chevaux owner...]

In the early '60's I had a Renault Dauphine, IIRC, all of 35HP.

When we (the Motorola gang) would go out to lunch, Tom Frederiksen would always comment that he felt like he was being chased by 100 lawn mowers ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Ah, yesss, how could I not have known! :-)

Was, it rusted out from underneath me like French cars tend to do. Only

There were some other versions of it :-)

A blast from the past:

Duaphines could also be souped up.

Wasted spark in a 2-cylinder boxer? That's horizontally opposed, but not strictly a boxer. Boxers fire opposite cylinders at the same time.

Gordini did amazing things with Renault engines. The R8 Gordinis were very dominant in rallying, and the R15 Gordini was a damn fine car too.

It was only boxer-inspired. This has a little more info under "Engine":

Maybe they were involved in the development of the Renault R5 Alpine? Those were hot cars but the quality wasn't great. They rusted fast.

A boxer have separate crank pins 180 degrees apart, so they hit TDC the same time, a "flat" has shared crank pins so one piston is at TDC while the other is at BDC

the 2CV has separate cranks pins and I expect that it fires alternating left right, it has the sparkplug in series so it would be hard to get a spark if they were both in compression at the same time

Pretty sure they were. There's a motor shop in Melbourne set up by a couple of ex Renault-rallying folk that calls itself "Alpine Affaire". They tried to sell me on an Alpine A110 - fibreglass body with a single square section chassis joining the front and rear. Noisy little car, notchy gearbox, so small you can stand by the drivers door and reach over to touch the passenger's window - but if you have the balls for it, faster than almost anything else on a twisty road.

This shop was building the 1565cc Renault engines to put out above 180BHP, naturally aspirated, in a sub-600kg car. They had moulds for the A110 bodies too, so they could make spare panels and had even made complete cars.

Also I think I meant R17 Gordini, not R15.