Originally Posted by
culver
While you are looking for stuff, it's been a long time but you don't happen to have a themodynamic cycle comparison of a turbo vs non-turbo motor of the same power? I've been trying to remember the details of how a turbo makes a gasoline motor more efficient. I can think of lots of reasons why a smaller displacement turbo would be more efficient than a larger motor of the same power but most of those reasons are not specific to the motor but are related to the car. Things like longer top gear thus lower RPM. Think about it in terms of comparing say a 1997 SAAB 900 2.0T vs 2.3 non-T. It's been a while since I've looked at my themo cycles.
Not putting numbers in, the existence of the Turbo is already recycling the energy in the exhaust gas that would otherwise just be wasted into helping the engine do work, so I'd imagine you are bumping the efficiency up regardless...
Side note, the MSRP of this thing is probably less important than the Lease cost of $350/month. That's about "normal" for a family car if not a little bit on the high side. But for someone looking at this kind of product they might just take the plunge since its not a significant jump...
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