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Ferrari patents a fancy and fascinating electric turbocharger

While turbocharging has improved vastly over the years, and it has enabled cars to become both more powerful and more efficient, there's always room for improvement. Turbochargers scavenge exhaust gas pressure and use it to turn a compressor that forces intake air into the cylinders. However, as the patent points out, this means the intake compressor and the exhaust turbine are physically coupled, and have to spin at the same rate. Ferrari's design divorces the two, and it's a happy breakup. The key is hooking up the two components of the turbo to their own individual electric motors, with an energy storage device in between. It's different than the electric supercharger systems you have seen on certain Audi products, for example. Those systems recover energy like a hybrid, store it, and then use it to drive an intake compressor. It supplements conventional turbochargers that harvest energy from the exhaust. In systems like Audi's, the electric supercharger is supplementing the sequential conventional turbochargers when they're not operating efficiently, at very low RPM in particular. It works well, but it's complicated, and it is a workaround for the limitations of a conventional turbocharger. See below for an animation of the Audi system. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Usually, optimizing a turbo is a compromise between figuring out what RPM is ideal for each side to spin at to generate power. A smaller compressor generates boost more quickly, but loses efficiency at higher RPM. But there's way more energy in high-RPM exhaust gasses. By hooking up the turbine to an electric motor instead, you can harvest energy from the exhaust throughout the rev range, and particularly when the engine is pushing lots of gasses through. And you can store that energy in a battery if it's not needed at that moment. The intake-side compressor also has a reversible electric motor attached. It is not physically connected to the turbine, so it can operate at any time the computers decide it's beneficial. As engine RPM increases, the compressor doesn't have to increase its speed beyond its optimal range, so there's less energy wasted. And at low RPM situations, when a conventional turbocharger wouldn't have enough exhaust gas passing through its turbine side to generate useful boost in the compressor side, the electric motor can spin up Ferrari's divorced compressor to provide some boost.

Ferrari celebrates 10 million Facebook fans, animates Montezemolo

Kia has 2.1 million fans on Facebook, though we'd wager that far more people worldwide own Kias than are fans of the Korean automaker's page. On the other hand, Ferrari, whose owners number just a lucky few, has a legion of fans counted in the millions. In fact, the Facebook page for the Italian automaker just surpassed 10 million Likes.
To celebrate this social media milestone, Ferrari has put together this cute little video below, featuring chairman Luca di Montezemolo, as well as a few other animated guest appearances.
For comparison's sake, major corporations like Pepsi have 9.1 million fans, Kohl's has 9.7 million fans, and Wal-Mart has 25+ million fans. For a car company that sells a few thousand units a year, 10+ million upstretched thumbs is quite the following.

When a Ferrari and a Toyota GT86 get jiggy, strange things happen

Swapping V8s into small Japanese cars is not new. In fact, swapping V8s into small sportscars from anywhere is not new. From the original Cobra to the modern FR-S and BRZ, big V8 power in a light, lithe chassis has been delicious combination rivaling the Reese's peanut butter cup. People familiar with these swaps know that American iron is the preferred source for large-displacement grunt, but Ryan Tuerck and Gumout have taken a different route, specifically from Italy. Replacing the 2.0-liter flat-4 of this Toyota GT86 is a Ferrari F136 V8. Unfortunately that's about the only detail we really know about this project. The F136 was used in the F430, California and 458 Italia, and all with varying displacement and output. So we don't even know which of those variants this engine is. If it came from a California, that'd at least make the front-engine location easier to fabricate. No matter though, it's still a Ferrari engine in a small car, and that's awesome. And Donut Media, the company that produced the video, promises more details down the road. In the meantime, enjoy this video preview of the project. Related Video: Related Gallery 2017 Toyota 86: New York 2016 View 12 Photos Aftermarket Weird Car News Ferrari Toyota Performance Videos sports car toyota gt86 engine swap 86 flat-four