Originally Posted by
Eggman
Yes, it is laughable. Ford is doing this. From what I remember, they use a electric fan to spin up a turbocharger to eliminate turbo lag. I remember Jay Leno took one for a test drive - a Focus, I think.
Crazy, indeed.
The laughable part isn't that this wouldn't work in principle; laughable part is those fleeBay kits they sell. The kit consists of regular bathroom fan with 5amp/12v motor and claims "huge increase in HP".
First of all fan is designed to move air, not to compress it. 2nd you need more than 60w to compress 4cf of air a second to 15psi (Mirage engine sucks in ~2CF/second at 6,000 RPM).
Properly designed electric supercharger needs to have housing similar to turbocharger and high RPM electric motor, or gear box. Also 12v isn't gonna cut it as it will require 300-600 amp currents.
Now I would love to get my hands on commercially viable electric supercharger, but if there are any they will cost many times more than off the shelf turbo and custom made manifolds.
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View my fuel log 2015 Mirage DE 1.2 manual: 46.4 mpg (US) ... 19.7 km/L ... 5.1 L/100 km ... 55.7 mpg (Imp)