Turbocharging is N times better than turbocharging. Why is it not popular?

Many consumers want a turbocharged car when purchasing a car. After all, a car with a “T” is better than a car with a naturally aspirated engine in terms of power performance.

However, for the purpose of enhancing the engine's power output, there is a technology that brings better results than turbo charging, which is supercharger.

First of all, we have to figure out what is supercharged and turbocharged.

As the name suggests, supercharging is to increase the air pressure of the engine intake manifold by mechanical means, thereby increasing engine output power. It works like a blower, and drives the belt or chain through the crankshaft of the engine to rotate the blades inside the supercharger to output more air. When the engine absorbs the air, it will emit more gasoline, increasing Dynamic performance (shown below). At present, there are three types of supercharging: centrifugal type, Lu type, and spiral type.

The turbocharger uses the exhaust gas emitted by the engine to drive the turbine. It is necessary to wait until the engine speed rises to a certain level before starting work. It works like you hold an electric fan to blow the inside of the cylinder, hard to put the wind inside the cylinder, so that the air inside increases, in order to enhance the combustion efficiency. (As shown below)

What are the advantages of supercharging?

As mentioned above, the supercharger is directly driven by the crankshaft of the engine, that is, the supercharger works synchronously with the engine. This does not have the turbo lag phenomenon commonly found in turbocharged engines, and the power output is like natural suction. The engine is linear and its performance is stronger than that of a self-priming engine.

At the same time, due to the synchronous operation of the supercharger and the engine, the supercharger can provide supercharging effect when the engine is under low torque output, and the power response under low torque is very fast, and there is no turbocharger of the kind that has low rotational fatigue. "a feeling of.

More importantly, since the supercharger does not need to be connected to the engine's lubrication system, the ambient temperature for the work is only 70-100°C (the turbocharger is 400-900°C), so the supercharger is for lubrication. The requirements of the system and cooling system are much lower than those of the turbocharger, and there will be no abnormality in the lubrication system of the turbocharged vehicle, causing burnt oil, excessive temperature, and the like. Taken together, supercharging is even more practical than turbocharging.

Then the question is, the practicality of supercharger is so high. Why is it not popular?

Everything has two sides, and supercharging is indeed top-notch in some respects, but it also has unbearable flaws. The first is the consumer interest. Since the supercharger is always in working condition, the engine will always spray more gasoline and the fuel consumption will increase substantially. At the same time, the precision of turbochargers is higher than that of turbochargers and their volume is also larger. Therefore, the manufacturing cost of the turbocharger is higher, and the selling price of the vehicle and the maintenance cost of the later period are also improved.

Secondly, the supercharger is driven by the engine, which means that it will consume a part of the engine's power while enhancing the power. Therefore, if a small-displacement engine is equipped with a supercharger, the magnitude of power boost is not obvious. Large-displacement vehicles will not have such problems, such as the Audi S5 and Volkswagen Touareg.

The last point is the noise of the engine. Although the supercharger has better running smoothness than the turbocharger, the noise during operation is far greater than that of the turbocharger and the driving comfort is poor.

In summary, although the advantages of the supercharger are obvious, there are many hard injuries that consumers find difficult to accept. So does this mean that the supercharger is useless?

the answer is negative. Due to the advantages of supercharger and turbocharger, many manufacturers integrated them into a single supercharged engine. The engine can be supercharged in the low-speed range without turbo lag, and turbocharger is enabled at high rpm, which solves the disadvantages of inefficient and oil-consuming mechanical supercharging at high rpm. In this regard, the EA111 dual supercharged engine powered by Volkswagen Scirocco is a good example, although its displacement is only 1.4T, but the power performance is enough to match many brands of 1.8T turbocharged engine.

Unfortunately, due to the difficulty and high cost of the double booster technology, the technology is currently only controlled by a few car companies, and it is only applied to a few luxury models, such as Porsche Cayenne Cayenne GTS, Lincoln Navigator and other luxury Branded models. This is why mechanical supercharging has not been popularized in every segment of the car.