In a recent automobile conference, Honeywell CTO Craig Balis talked about the future of electric turbochargers. He said the many superiorities of the electric turbos will contribute itself to go forward to the mass market as soon as in the next four years.
An electric turbocharger is similar to a conventional one in the sense that it uses waste gas to spin and pump more air into the engine, but that’s about where the similarities end. An electric turbo with an electric motor that does two things; it assists in spooling up the turbo to eliminate turbo lag and it generates electricity which goes back into the vehicle network. That takes some of the work off of the alternator meaning the engine doesn’t have to work as hard to crank the alternator which saves fuel.
Bais said one of the main reasons why people are starting to choosing electric turbos is fewer technical challenges. An electric turbo would actually have fewer parts than a conventional one “because you should not add more extra package to the engine,” according to Bais. He also says they’re subject to less heat because “a typical turbocharger will run at between 200,000 and 300,000 rpm, while an electric turbocharger can run at 100,000 rpm.”
As for market adoption, Bais thinks that the percentage of engines globally manufactured which are turbocharged will grow from 40% to 60%. By the time of 2030. Since turbos are growing fast and will soon become the majority in the global auto market, he believes that there’s still some room to experiment with electric turbos which Honeywell hopes to become the new standard for the industry.
