Something old is new again — and greener:
Under pressure to reduce emissions and increase fuel-efficiency, automakers are quietly turning to turbocharging as a relatively cheap, easy-to-implement technology that could soon be a permanent staple on internal combustion engines.That’s because turbos, high-velocity fans that recirculate and compress exhaust gases back into the motor’s cylinders, can increase fuel-efficiency by as much as 30% while increasing power output. Thanks to that increased power, smaller engines can be used, reducing weight and further increasing efficiency. And because it’s a proven technology, the research and development costs are enticingly low.
[...]
“This is not something on the drawing board. Turbos are here,” said Adriane Brown, president and chief executive of Honeywell Transportation Systems, the leading turbo manufacturer, with $2.5 billion in turbo sales last year. As turbos gain more acceptance, she expects sales to grow three times faster than the automotive segment in the next few years, or about 8%.Turbos are hardly new. After finding a place on ships, locomotives and airplanes in the first half of the last century, they were adopted for passenger cars in the 1970s when BMW, Mercedes, Mitsubishi and even Buick bolted them on manifolds. Despite popularity among car tuners, they quickly lost acceptance among the general population, which saw them as unreliable, expensive and, with their sudden bursts of acceleration, dangerous.
Older turbos delivered great amounts of torque, yet frequently there was a short time gap between stepping on the pedal and feeling the power. That gap, called turbo lag, could cause unsuspecting drivers to crash.
New turbo technology has essentially eliminated that gap while providing variable boost depending on the engine velocity, turbo manufacturers say. And turbos add only slightly to the cost of a car, they say, between $1,000 and $3,000 — part of which can be offset by using a smaller engine.
And though some carmakers are just now embracing the technology (and a very few still shun it), others have been pressing the turbo button for years. GM’s Saab, for example, has long used turbocharged engines and Subaru has had them in cars for 25 years, including four current models.
In Europe, turbocharger-equipped diesel engines are far and away the most common engine type, approaching 50% market penetration. Yet in the U.S., said Honeywell’s Brown, only 6% of cars and truck are “boosted.”