Volvo's 'Power Pulse' Technology Uses Compressed Air To Kill Turbo Lag
The issue of turbo lag isn’t lost on manufacturers, who over the years have come up with all sorts of innovative ways to combat it. There’s sequential turbocharging - which features one blower for lower engine speeds and another for higher engine speeds - twin-scroll turbochargers, and even VTEC. Yep, on the current Honda Civic Type R, Honda’s variable valve timing tech performs the opposite task to what we’re used to, being used to boost low-end torque to compensate for lag.
These are all well and good, but Volvo has come up with a new method that might kill it off entirely: Power Pulse. Fresh air from the intake is fed into a tank via a compressor, which is then shoved into the exhaust manifold when the driver puts his or her foot down. This allows for an “instant spool up” of the turbo. In other words: bye bye turbo lag. Clever, no?
It’ll be available on diesel versions of Volvo’s new S90.
Video via Reddit Cars
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
So Volvo invented a system that boosts the turbo that boosts the engine, touche Volvo, touche.
This is the first thing that came to my mind!
Essentially a turbochargercharger
I can’t imagine this system is going to be very reliable, but then again I can’t imagine electric turbos would be much better. It’s funny how much effort and money manufactures will put into trying to make turbo lag disappear. I understand why, but what happened to just letting turbos be turbos?
My non-turbo accord has turbo lag…
Step 1: Naturally aspirated V8.
Step 2: Turbo charge said V8
Step 3: Eliminate the phrase turbo ‘lag’ from vocabulary.
So it’s anti-lagg without the bam-bam. What’s the point in that?
Making things overcomplicated is the euro manufacturers biggest issue. That piece of garbage plastic electric air compressor will die in a few years. Cars are sadly become fashion accesories and manufacturers expect you to buy the new model as soon as it comes out. I can see it already. “Sir your car has turbo lag because the air compressor wont switch on. It isn’ serviceable but we can replace it with a new unit which will only cost you 800 euros.”
I found a bug: If the compressor wont be stupid fast, power pulse will be available for a defined number of times.
well how often will you have to accelerate really fast? unless you like to race at streetlights i don’t think this will be a issue besides a small air tank will not use to long to build up pressure. besides if you want more sportiness would you not chose petrol version?
Why they use fresh air to spool up turbo ? Why they don’t release it directly into the air intake between turbo and engine ?
Because the volume of air required to spool a Turbo vs feeding the engine is much less. Also, kickstarting the turbo on the exhaust end means it doesn’t need to stay on for very long before the turbo is spinning fast enough. Going into the intake it would not spool the turbo, requiring it to feed air until normal spoolup happens. It would essentially be a low-RPM electric Turbo at that point, which would be much heavier and cause a significant power draw.
i want a volvo now
Haven’t rally cars been using a form of this technology, but utilizing pressurized air bleed-off from the turbo outlet instead of a dedicated compressor? Seems it would be a more compact and reliable and cheaper way to accomplish this.