One of the most cost effective steps that can be taken by vehicle manufacturers to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions is to fit an electric supercharger in combination with smaller petrol (gasoline) or diesel engines and taller gearing says Controlled Power Technologies.
Following years of product development and the application of the very latest power electronics, the company's innovative electric supercharger known as VTES or Variable Torque Enhancement System has been incorporated in a major project by engine developer AVL and will also feature in the Ricardo-led 3m `HyBoost' programmed announced by the Technology Strategy Board on 9 September 2009. Both projects are seeking to maximize powertrain efficiency at the lowest possible cost.
The fully developed and production-ready device could prove timely in helping car makers meet EC directives to cut average CO2 emissions from new cars to 130 grams per kilometer by 2012 and to 95 grams per kilometer by 2020. There are heavy fines for non-compliance. This means that by 2020 new cars will have to emit on average 40 per cent less CO2 than they do today. An electric supercharger could prove a key component for meeting these requirements. It could also benefit novel internal combustion engine concepts currently in development, which often demand forced air induction.
Unlike a crankshaft driven supercharger or exhaust driven turbocharger, which similarly boost the performance of a downsized engine, an electric supercharger operates independently of engine speed. This crucial difference means the technology is perfectly suited to maintaining vehicle transient performance and driveability - now widely recognized as a critical marketing issue for any car maker contemplating radical downsizing of an IC engine to maximize fuel efficiency.
"Motorists must feel confident that they can safely keep up with the flow of traffic and will have certain minimum expectations when it comes to vehicle performance," says CPT engineering director Guy Morris. "This includes the need for an immediate torque response when stepping on the accelerator pedal. As Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation, put it at the recent Low Carbon Vehicle conference `there's little public appetite for poorly performing cars, whether they are environmentally friendly or not. People want performance and efficiency'. Electric supercharging also avoids the enormous expense and complexity of integrating an electric motor directly into a powertrain to create a mild or full hybrid electric vehicle."
Increasing the efficiency of the powertrain through extreme downsizing is fast becoming a widely recognized near term solution for both petrol and diesel engines. Unfortunately, downsizing the engine and increasing the gearing, while hugely beneficial for fuel economy and carbon emissions, tends to leave a massive torque deficit, particularly at low engine revs. Finding cost-effective technology to overcome this issue is a universal problem facing engine developers.
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