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By RICHARD TRUETT | Automotive News


Garett Engine Boosting Systems uses an electric motor to bring a turbocharger up to speed quickly.
Demand for turbochargers could spool up quickly in the next few years as manufacturers strive to meet their customers' thirst for higher performance and still satisfy the government's push for higher fuel economy.

Turbochargers enable an automaker to use smaller engines without sacrificing performance.

Officials from the two leading turbocharger manufacturers, Garrett Engine Boosting Systems and BorgWarner Turbo Systems, are gearing up for wider applications of turbochargers in North America.

Some of the increase in volume will come when diesel engines begin penetrating light-duty trucks and cars in 2004.

The Chrysler group will install a turbocharged diesel engine in the Jeep Liberty SUV late next year. Mercedes-Benz will add a turbodiesel to the E class. And Volkswagen recently announced plans to introduce a Passat turbo diesel.

But it is gasoline engines that could get a real boost from the turbocharger, thanks to improvements in technology and engineering.

"Turbochargers will make a big step in gasoline engines," says Fritz Indra, General Motors' executive director of advanced engineering. Indra predicts that the global volume of gasoline turbochargers could expand by as much as 50 percent by 2010.

"The turbo is part of the diesel," he says. "Everyone accepts it. In the future, gasoline engines will also have many more turbos, but you have to do it right with aluminum turbine wheels and integrated exhaust manifolds."

Electronic engine controls and upgrades to the impeller have made turbos more efficient over a greater rpm range. Also, overheating no longer is an issue, thanks to better lubrication, improved bearings and more efficient heat management.

Some of the finicky turbos used in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, when the devices enjoyed a brief spurt of popularity, were notoriously unreliable. Automakers issued a list of dos and don'ts for drivers of turbocharged cars. The instructions often were ignored, leading to failures.

The lesson learned? "You cannot inconvenience the customer," says Steve McKinley, director of business development for BorgWarner Turbo Systems.

Both Garrett and BorgWarner are working on a number of improvements to the turbocharger that are expected to bring even greater performance from small-displacement engines.

Both companies are using the experience they've gained in Europe to improve the turbocharger's performance and reliability. In many European countries, turbocharged diesels account for as much as 40 percent of the new-car market.

Both companies are testing and readying for production:


Dual or two-stage turbo systems that enable a gasoline engine to deliver greater performance throughout the rpm range. One turbo works at low speeds while another kicks in at high engine rpms.


Variable vane turbochargers for gasoline engines that vary the amount of boost by regulating the amount of exhaust gases that drive the impeller.


Electronically driven turbochargers for gasoline engines that use a small electric motor to bring the turbo up to speed quickly, which eliminates the traditional pause or "turbo lag."

Robert Gillette, CEO of Honeywell's Transportation and Power Systems, which owns the Garrett brand, says his company forecasts growth of between 9 percent and 12 percent a year in gasoline engine turbochargers in the U.S. market. Worldwide, Garrett sold about 8 million turbochargers last year.

Says Gillette: "Most of our customers are focused on performance. If they can achieve superior performance, they'll buy it. You've got to have something that creates value."

A turbocharger and its related equipment add between $600 and $900 to the cost of a car. But an automaker can recover that and more if a turbocharger is used on the right vehicle, says Lindsay Brooke, senior analyst with consulting firm CSM Worldwide Inc. in Northville, Mich.

"Having a turbo badge doesn't hurt in certain segments of the market," Brooke says. A turbocharger, he adds, has "street cred" or gets respect for drivers of sporty compact cars.

But, he says, a turbocharger might not improve fuel economy because the type of person who would buy a turbocharged car likely would drive it aggressively and cancel out the gains that come from downsizing the engine.

Even if turbochargers see limited use on gasoline-powered engines, both Garrett and BorgWarner say the future looks good for another reason: Turbochargers can help diesel engines meet tougher exhaust emissions standards.

"We play a role in helping an engine manufacturer keep the performance and fuel economy targets with a robust and flexible boost system," says BorgWarner's McKinley. "What we can do with a diesel engine is make the air system very tolerant and flexible. The engine manufacturer can supply very high amounts of exhaust gasses back into the cylinder. It lowers the overall combustion temperature and reduces NOx (oxides of nitrogen) emissions."


McKinley views the PT Cruiser, which uses a competitor's turbocharger, as an important test.

"Nothing really beats having a successful application out in the marketplace," he says.

"What we see is DCX's application on the PT Cruiser seems to be getting good reviews so far. We kind of see that as an enabler to open up the marketplace. We're here on the ground in Detroit to keep that moving along."

Nashua_Night_Hawk

I can smell another Law Suit TurboDyne Vs Honeywell...

Honeywell is just using the TurboDyne Designs and Honeywell killed TurboDyne before it ever could make a single E-Turbo!

Red Nj-s

cool, turbo engines are alot easier to mod, just crank up the boost!