As far as the piston skirt goes you can trim the skirt down to the minimum needed on the thrust surfaces and coat it with anti-friction material.

I am curious to see it go against a boxer with extremely long con-rods and see if it does offer a real benefit.

To be commercially viable it needs to offer more savings for the money than a competing design, and all the moving parts and weight would seem to negate any efficiency savings with increased material, machining, and servicing costs.

I think it is neat, don’t get me wrong, just perform due diligence by comparing it to a long stroke boxer (like maybe block spacers on a Subaru engine or something), instead of “standard 4 cyl”, which could be anything from a Ford to a Honda.

I wonder if similar gains could be realized with asymmetrical bearings to reduce oil surface tension drag on the crank where there are minimal or no loading forces.

Never mind that the “friction losses” (~15%) are nothing compared to the thermal losses (~70%).