Volvo's 'Power Pulse' Technology Uses Compressed Air To Kill Turbo Lag

04 Dec 2015

The issue of turbo lag isn’t lost on manufacturers, who over the years have come up with all sorts of innovative ways to combat it. There’s sequential turbocharging - which features one blower for lower engine speeds and another for higher engine speeds - twin-scroll turbochargers, and even VTEC. Yep, on the current Honda Civic Type R, Honda’s variable valve timing tech performs the opposite task to what we’re used to, being used to boost low-end torque to compensate for lag.

These are all well and good, but Volvo has come up with a new method that might kill it off entirely: Power Pulse. Fresh air from the intake is fed into a tank via a compressor, which is then shoved into the exhaust manifold when the driver puts his or her foot down. This allows for an “instant spool up” of the turbo. In other words: bye bye turbo lag. Clever, no?

It’ll be available on diesel versions of Volvo’s new S90.

Video via Reddit Cars

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Technology

That’s not turbo lag that’s boost threshold delay

Do car throttle have an equivalent to a blue Peter badge for this guy?

Nope, this systemis there to tackle turbo lag. They use it to minimize the time it takes to spool up. Not to make it spool up earlier in the rev range. So yes it’s turbo lag.

Damm, that’s really cool! Although I also like Lag, it makes the power delivery more dramatic.

I agree, I like the lag then intense surge of power from the tiny 2.0L motor bolted onto the massive HKS!!Turbo lag also makes high horsepower cars drive able on the street, because you don’t have instant torque. In a 800hp SC V8, if you sneeze too hard with your foot near the throttle, you’ll end up sideways breaking many speed limits!! Where as in a 800hp
“small” capacity turbo motor, you can sneeze all you like and the back end will stay behind you, because it takes another 2 - 4 seconds of full throttle before the motor reaches its maximum torque, which by the way, comes all at once 😳😂

Now if Volvo doesn’t patent it like seat belts and make it standard to all turbocharged cars :D

Boring.

Wouldn’t this make the o2 sensors think that it’s running lean?

Pretty sure the computer can figure out when the air is being forced in and react accordingly.

You can have a sensor, similar to a maf sensor, which would meter the air being added.

this system will be only on diesel so diesel cars in most cases haven’t o2 sensors

Why would a diesel have an O2 sensor? They don’t have throttle plates and regulate fuel delivery, not air delivery. They are running lean 100% of the time as normal operation.