Quote:
Originally Posted by bradleyland
Look, I beat the "high-boost I4 engines have lag" drum as much as the next guy, but your comment here is complete bullshit. No reputable reviewer has said the M133 is "pure JUNK". Not even close. They say that it's a remarkable engine, but suffers from turbo lag.
That along with sound are two pretty big issues. At least a 6 can still sound good... Stock FI 4 bangers, rarely do.
Seven years is a while. Look at the crazy new ERS (energy recovery systems) they're using in F1. How long before that kind of tech makes it in to road cars?
I agree that you're not going to change the laws of physics for an I4 engine. It's always going to suffer from NVH and lag, but reliability is an engineering problem, and humans are damned good at engineering. You can't compare a factory engineered 1.8 bar boosted I4 to a tuner car. Tuners have 1/100th the R&D budget. When's the last time you heard of a local/regional tuner that was breaking ground in materials engineering research?
I do think we'll see an I4 turbo with a higher specific output than Mercedes' M133 engine, and I think there's a strong possibility we'll see it paired with a hybrid electric driveline. There are plenty of buyers who will reject it, but there are a whole new generation of buyers who will embrace it. |
A whole lot of assumptions there... all I am saying is that I don't believe it until I see it. The only electric pairing that currently happens is with monster motors and lightweight supercars that make recovery that much easier. Add the NVH and general reliability issues and so forth so forth... we have a long way to go. And then, the dude next to you in an old ass random turbo 6 blows right past you on 10 year old technology that is much cheaper.