While the wave disk engine has the potential to be a successful advancement in engine design it, like many other pistonless rotary engine, has many technical challenges that have to be overcome to make the engine viable for widespread use. One issue with the pistonless design is that it reduces the engine's ability to produce torque. At low speeds this limitation greatly reduces fuel economy, so a vehicle's wave disk engine would lose a lot of efficiency while driving around a city, for example. Still, this does not detract from its potential in power generation where the engine would be run at high speeds.

      Perhaps the biggest challenge that has to be overcome to make the wave disk engine viable is that all of the surfaces inside the engine need to be sealed. The interior air intake, the exterior exhaust ports, and each side of the chambers would have to be tightly sealed to prevent the leakage of gases and shockwave energy. This raises issues of how the inside of the engine would be lubricated, and how they would be attached securely enough to keep them from being pulled off by inertia. Rotary engines in general have always had problems with sealing, and only one, the Wankel Engine, has ever been successful (which has a proprietary design). These issues have been a major roadblock for the project. The team started working towards a commercially viable model in January 2013, and as of yet there have been no major announcements from the team.