TECH

Electrical superchargers. Ben Purvis investigates.

Problems with packaging and power delivery have made turbos and superchargers hard to implement on two wheels but now a solution could be in sight with the rapid recent development of electric superchargers.

The basic idea of turbos and superchargers is simple; you compress air before it enters cylinders. That means there’s more oxygen in there, and when combined with extra fuel there’s a more powerful combustion to force the piston down. It replicates a larger-capacity engine.

That’s all very well, but both turbochargers and superchargers have drawbacks on bikes. Turbos, which use spent exhaust gasses to drive a turbine that’s connected by a shaft to the compressor, are more ecient because they use ‘waste’ power. But that leads to the familiar problem of turbo lag, when you have to wait for the engine to pump enough exhaust to spin up the turbo. On a bike – with little flywheel mass and a sensitive hand-operated throttle – that’s an issue.

So, superchargers then? They’re mechanically-driven compressors,