Not really true.
Imagine a room full of kindle. What would burn it the fastest? Light it with 1 match, 1 blow torch, or 3 blow torches close to eachother?
A blow torch (or 3 blow torches) have more energy to light off kindling, but would also have dozens of times more surface area to spread that energy around to ignite the kindling.
If you concentrated the heat energy of those blowtorches into the same flame area as a match, it would only do a little bit better job of setting the kindling aflame.
You only need (and can use) enough spark energy to ignite the fuel. More energy in the same space does nothing more. As the above scientific paper illustrated, the innovation that improved performance was the one that increased ignition surface area.
A whiz-bang ultra-plasma megajolt ignition, firing across the same tiny spark gap, would probably do no more than increase spark plug electrode wear. If it was really a massive increase in energy, the plugs might wear out in a few tanks of fuel (though maybe the iridium ones might last longer.)
The main circumstances where increased spark energy is helpful is if the motor runs very high compression or high boost. Then, because it's harder to ignite the mixture under those conditions, extra spark energy is helpful. May also help if lots of oil is getting into the combustion chamber. (analogous to lighting off wet kindling.)
Dave
