Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
IN the global battle against carbon emissions, carmakers have made considerable progress in recent years by boosting the fuel efficiency of their internal combustion engines thanks to gadgets like turbochargers, industry officials and analysts have said.
Although it may be an odd-sounding name for a green technology, the turbocharger raises fuel efficiency levels by up to 40 per cent and is now included in 75 per cent of new cars in Europe. That could rise to nearly 90 per cent by 2015.
They are far less common in the Middle East and the US, mainly due to an aversion to diesel-powered cars, but that is expected to change soon in an era of strict fuel economy standards.
“The turbocharger is a green technology in the sense that it’s helping cut emissions and raise fuel economy,” said Craig Balis, vice president for engineers at Honeywell Turbo Technologies. “It’s a critical component to get more fuel efficiency out of the engine.”
While the mention of turbochargers might have once conjured up images of loud, powerful engines, they have in the meantime become a tool for cutting carbon emissions.
A diesel engine fitted with a turbocharger can go 40 per cent further and a petrol engine 20 per cent further on a litre of fuel. The turbocharged 2012 Ford Explorer, for instance, gets about 37km per gallon compared to 32kpg for the naturally aspirated version, Ford says.
“Emissions regulations worldwide are a driving force for cleaner, greener vehicles and that’s a great landscape for turbocharging,” said Mr Balis. “We’re confident about the continued evolution of combustion engines and the growing role turbocharging has.”
The focus on electric cars and low-emission vehicles at the Frankfurt Car Show has been intense this year with many manufacturers touting their plug-ins or plans for electrification.
However, industry officials and analysts say electric cars will have only a small sliver of the market even by 2020. Doubts abound about prohibitively high battery costs, infrastructure issues and the size of the electric cars’ carbon footprint when power comes from fossil-fuel burning plants.
Pierre Gaudillat, a policy officer at the Transport and Environment lobby group in Brussels, said turbochargers are not the ‘silver bullet’ in the battle against CO2 but agreed they do reduce emissions.
“They are one answer but not the only answer,” he said. “It’s one of the main strategies carmakers are using now – downsizing and making smaller engines with a turbo that squeezes out more power.”
So does the world really still need electric cars from a CO2 point of view?
“That’s a valid question,” said Mr Gaudillat. “The answer is: maybe not. Turbos are a no-brainer for cutting CO2 because the efficiency gains are really quite significant. In the near term we don’t really need and can’t count on electric vehicles to deliver the CO2 savings. Maybe not until about 2030 or 2050.”
