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
How to kill turbo lag naturally…
Well heres the problem. This kind of system would be perfect for normal driving done by normal people. They’d only need a fast hit of acceleration every now and then. Here’s the thing. Normal people don’t care about turbo lag or straight up don’t notice it.
I can’t imagine this being very effective for repeated accelerations, the compressor can’t work fast enough.
Compressor is the answer instead of all this complexity that probably will break.
Nice. A few extra sensors and parts to fail.
Yeah its good and all but I’d rather ave a misfiring system thank you
why do they use the air to spin the turbine instead of spinning the compressor wheel? doesnt getting warm take energy from the air? or does it add?… i should know this^^
okok its getting energy from getting warm, this is genius.