The real electric supercharger

[oil pan 4]

Real electric supercharger obviously do exist, but most are a ridiculous stamped sheet metal fans on a motor so small that it could never produce any boost, no matter what kind of air pump you drive with it.

To spot a fake electric super charger look for stamed sheet metal fan sitting a top an electric motor with a price tag of under $250.
The other faux electric super charger is a boat bilge fan. Usually all plastic, squirrel cage fan and cheaper than the stamped sheet metal fan since all the seller had to do was buy the bilge vent fan from tne local marine store and put it in a cool looking box.

The real electeic super charger will come with a real supercharger price tag. Will have a compressor, most likely roots type or centrifugal type blower. Not a fan.
The electric motors will be rather large.

To do something rather modest such as boost a sub 2L engine to 5psi at 3000rpm at sea level on a 70°F day is going to take a compressor that can put out around 2.5hp.
To get a 12v electrical system to provide 1hp is going to require about 61 amps.
If you wanted performance level power you are taking about needing hundreds of amps to drive a compressor rated in tens of horsepower.

To get the 150 or so amps to run a 2.5hp supercharger you are going to need 2ga wire.
150 amps is going to be about the power the starter motor uses during engine start. The OEM electrical system isnt going to hold up to that kind of use at all.

[ecomodded]

Remember - A FAN TYPE is a SCAM TYPE of a Supercharger / turbo wannabe.

Designed to separate po people from their money.

[baldlobo]

so why are we bringing up a topic that is long dead in unicorn land.

ps. mods please move

[user removed]

You don't need much pressure to really wake up a well designed engine like the 1.5 in a civic VX, and hypermilers would rerely even need that. Very small extremely high speed for a little boost very rarely but max a couple minutes then it has to recharge. Could be combined with a turbo and even less displacement, maybe 100 HP out of .5 liter for a short while.

Then drive the car with the normally aspirated engine with higher load and better efficiency all the time when just maintaining speed, with better aero.

Go even more radical and have a two cylinder for each axle, or my drive system and get rid of the throttle altogether.

regards
Mech

[Cobb]

Theres a good youtube video regarding this.

I like to look these scam fuel saving devices on ebay and see how many are sold and how many are watched.

[ecomodded]

Does the turbonator get good reviews Cobb ?

I think its called that , its the piece of tin you put the air cleaner hose for a spiraling effect with the air flow - its a static Turbo ..lol
its either the baby brother or big brother to the fan turbo / supercharger

[ecomodded]

I wonder how much a real , high hp electric supercharger costs.
I am thinking for a 100hp electric supercharger you would be paying over $10,000 for it, without a whole lot of options to save on the price of the kit.


Where as a 100hp waste gated turbo could be done, on a budget of $1000 or less if you were astute at picking your system and buying the parts wisely.
Europe has good upgrade part choices for turbo manifolds and programming maps


In the Future

If it did charge itself threw brake application and when downshifting it could remove the load from the alternator.

Its just young foolish and expensive right now..

It would be nice if it was passively charged threw wasted momentum , if it isn't already... then its just pricing that needs to be overcome.

[jamesqf]

Yeah, the real question is why on earth you'd want an electric supercharger in the first place. The point of a turbo is that the power needed to run it is free (energy that would otherwise be going out the tailpipe): with an electric supercharger, even if the thing actually worked, it'd be drawing considerable power from alternator & battery.

[niky]

Shame having a thread without a reference to the "real" electric charger:

Boosthead.com: Pricing



Old kit... if I recall right, three custom-wound electric motors running about 15 horsepower... some 6-7 psi of boost. The current kits use a centrifugal supercharger and range between 10-18 hp... the 10 hp variant does about 5 psi of boost. Between $2-$3k... which is cheap... the original kit was around $4-5k ten years ago... which would mean $6-8k now.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Yeah, the real question is why on earth you'd want an electric supercharger in the first place. The point of a turbo is that the power needed to run it is free (energy that would otherwise be going out the tailpipe)

Is it that simple? Aren't turbochargers similar in efficacy to superchargers, which run directly off of the engine?