Gadgetory

first of all if you're unclear on turbos check out our car Tech 101 on them back from episode 2 and our turbos vs. superchargers episode 15 segment but I can save you some trouble we can do a quick refresher on turbos right here with this Ford EcoBoost four-cylinder and this is the turbo apparatus this part picks up the exhaust gas coming out of the engine and it starts to spin a shaft on the other end of that is a compressor that takes air and rams more of it into the cylinder then the environment would do naturally and that's how you get more power out of the engine because more fuel more power but there are three hang-ups to this kind of design first of all since it's run by exhaust which is a gas and a compressible gas there's a whole lot of lag when you step on the gas pedal before you get the full effect of it secondly you've got an issue of size and placement I mean you've got one spool here another spool here and a lot of plumbing that means this thing's fairly big because it lives and runs off the exhaust it has to live at the exhaust manifold more or less that takes away some flexibility for engine designers who would like to put it somewhere else and thirdly since the turbo sits in the middle of the exhaust stream it gets in the way of scavenging exhaust gases and that means the engine breathes less well that's not good for power or efficiency the electric turbo seeks to answer all three of those limitations major supplier Vallejo has an electric turbo which they happen to call an electric supercharger it's powered by 48 volts DC four times what your car has now this is a new thing but we've covered it recently in our episode 63 car tech 101 if you want to brush up now once you have 48 volts this turbo can be mounted almost anywhere typically close to the intake of the engine for the shortest run to push the boosted air and of course not sitting in the exhaust path or it can be used to pre boost a traditional turbo so it works better that's part of why Vallejo claims this can increase mpg on a car by at least 10% and maybe over 15 to conquer turbo lag their electric booster always idles at around 10,000 rpm spooling up to a max of 70,000 to deliver full boost and almost the moment you demanded via the pedal outies been testing it and Vallejo says that company will put it into a production car in 2016 Honeywell and Continental are two other big industry suppliers who plan to have electric turbos on the market and in production cars perhaps a year or two after Vallejo taking a slightly different tack is major turbo maker BorgWarner with what they call an e booster it's a small electric air pump that additionally boosts what a conventional turbo is shoving into the engine either by being mounted before or after the turbo itself the e booster is always a helper not a primary turbo the fuel economy and emissions targets that are coming in the EU and US alone cover enough new cars each year to demand new ways of managing engine efficiency opening the door for electric turbos especially in smaller engines that demands more nuanced flexible boosting technologies more car tech demystified right now at CNET on cars comm click on car tech 101