[nds76]

Are Turbos important to the average motorist? Is it just a car aficionado thing for car enthusiasts?

 

[obermd]

It depends. In the past the answer was probably not. In today's regulatory climate they play an important role for the average motorist. Past turbos were designed with sheer power in mind. Today's turbos are designed to enable small displacement engines to comfortably haul around 3,000 lb vehicles. The base 1.4 liter engine in the 1st generation Cruze can only output 86 HP. This is more than sufficient to keep the car moving on level ground (it takes about 15-17 HP to keep my ECO MT cruising 65 MPH on the highway), but it's way too little power to accelerate at a reasonable speed or climb. Larger engines don't need a turbo for this but they consume more fuel, lowering their fuel economy and raising their emissions than a smaller engine with integrated turbo.

 

[stanman13]

Turbos are and will be of ever-increasing importance to the average motorist. They did start out as something for the enthusiasts- but most improvements in automotive technology do. Turbos have been around since at least the 60s, more and more commonplace since the 70s. They allow a much smaller engine to produce power that was formerly only attainable via displacement. Take a look at the number of cars now that have 2.0L turbos. There will only be more as we go on.

 

[pandrad61]

forced induction in a historical past has been to add power to a x displacement motor or to help compensate due to high altitude. if i remember first super charger was used on a bootleggers ford coupe deluxe to help make it faster even with extra weight of shine inside ( when it was popularly used) . forced induction was great in airplanes since at higher altitude it helped pack more O2 into engine. in today's world instead of using a big motor to power a car we down size the displacement and add forced induction ( turbos since they have very very little parasitic loss vs super charger) this will let it sip on fuel when not under heavy load such as cruising but when you stomp on it boost goes up + more fuel makes it bark like a bigger motor... thus average consumer doesn't tell the difference but at pump wont complain. .. even a big motor with a turbo can be rather fuel efficient as long as you dont put under load.. 4 psi on a 1.4 is not too much but 5 psi on a 6.2 lol pretty big jump