Fuel injection is the introduction of fuel in an internal combustion engine, most commonly automotive engines, by the means of an injector. This article focuses on fuel injection in reciprocating piston and rotary piston engines.
All diesel (compression-ignition) engines use fuel injection, and many Otto (spark-ignition) engines use fuel injection of one kind or another. Mass-produced diesel engines for passenger cars (such as the Mercedes-Benz OM 138) became available in the late 1930s and early 1940s, being the first fuel injected engines for passenger car use. In passenger car petrol engines, fuel injection was introduced in the early 1950s, and gradually gained prevalence until it had largely replaced carburetors by the early 1990s. The primary difference between carburetion and fuel injection is that fuel injection atomizes the fuel through a small nozzle under high pressure, while a carburetor relies on suction created by intake air accelerated through a Venturi tube to draw the fuel into the airstream.
The term "fuel injection" is vague and comprises various distinct systems with fundamentally different functional principles. Typically, the only thing in common all fuel injection systems have is the lack of carburetion. There are two main functional principles of mixture formation systems for internal combustion engines: internal mixture formation, and external mixture formation. A fuel injection system that uses external mixture formation is called a manifold injection system; there exist two types of manifold injection systems: multi-point injection (port injection), and single-point injection (throttle-body injection). Internal mixture formation systems can be separated into direct and indirect injection systems. There exist several different varieties of both direct and indirect injection systems; the most common internal mixture formation fuel injection system is the common-rail injection system, a direct injection system. The term electronic fuel injection refers to any fuel injection system having an engine control unit.