I stumbled upon this while lurking on FT86 Club forums.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39719

This apparently is a real working electric powered supercharger. Before anyone calls me an idiot, please read the thread before doing so. This isn't your crappy ebay electric fan that you stick in your intake, this appears to be the real deal. This seems perfect for our Fits. Low enough boost so it won't blow up our engines, small enough to fit into our already cramped engine bays. It only engages when you need, so you can preserve your stock fuel economy performance. This looks promising!

This is apparently their site(it looks shady, but they're still under construction)
New site - HOME

Here's another thread
Anyone with a small 4cyl new car want to try before you buy electric supercharger? - Beyond.ca - Car Forums

 

Ugh these were around when I was a younger man and trying to drive faster instead of drive cheaper. These were an absolute waste and caused more problems then horsepower. IIRC even the biggest ones could not provide the volume of air needed.

Hmmm doesn't say much about how many amps that thing would need. He says its non parasitic but to create even 2 psi you'd need to draw a good amount of power.

 

Save your money. The first problem a Fit will have is how you going to TUNE it?

To spin that to any useful impeller speed that actually produces boost is going to take a BUNCH of amps.

And no bypass for when it is not in operation is going to play havoc with normal operation cylinder loading.

 

According to site, it uses two 12v batteries that are wired in series to push out 24v.

BATTERIES - New site

On the bottom it states that the current of the batteries is 90-160 amps, which I guess is depending on the temperature.

The specs on the superchargers found on the website say they use 24v, the smaller one uses 3000 watts, which would mean 3000w/24v = 125 amps. The larger one uses 3500 watts, so 3500w/24v = 145.83 amps.

 

Good detective work. 125-150 amps? That is a LOT of power, especially for a fit. Even the largest home appliances draw about 15-20. So your basically powering 10 refrigerators?

 

HOLY SH*T

I wonder how well these (especially the batteries) will hold up after prolonged use, that's a lot of heat.

Interesting concept and I believe it, this is not just a fan run off the battery. Ultimately you have to run both batteries for the supercharger and a battery for the car, you could get a small Deka or something and try to fit all three in the stock battery location... I don't see a whole lot of other room in the Fit's bay to mount the auxiliary batteries. I'm certainly not mounting them anywhere in the cabin for several reasons. I wonder how performance suffers when the blower is off as well.

Price point will be key, and it's yet TBA. Those batteries won't last forever.

 

I googled the battery model and found that they're going for 50 bucks each on amazon.
Amazon.com: Buying Choices: Powersonic PS-12180NB 12v 18Ah Lead Acid Battery

 

I remember seeing people compare the best electric blower to a typical gas leaf blower.


The gas blower would create a HUGE amount of air movement compared the the electric one, and it still only added roughly7 horsepower on an otherwise stock K20 out of an acura rsx or civic si (cant remember car)

Now keep in mind those 2 cars i listed both will respond better to performance stuff. and if a big meaty growly leafblower drinking on gas only did that much change, can you really honestly believe an electric blower motor under a grand will do the same thing?

 

Watts are a measure of power, not amps; amps are current. 3000 W would be 25 A on a 120 V household circuit: still a lot, but not ten fridges worth—probably more like three or four modern fridges, or a couple of clothes irons. That's only with the blower is active, of course, which is nowhere near all the time; the average power consumption is naturally lower.

3000 W is about 4 hp.

(DrewE's random factoid of the day: V, A, and W are properly capitalized as units because the words "volt," "ampere," and "watt" are derived from people's names.)

 

So if your factoid is correct why didn't you capitalize them when written out?

But anyway member "Lyon nightroad]" has already put at leaf blower on his Fit. If you are interested search his posts.

That is still way too much draw for tiny batteries they aren't going to last long and the length of time power will be available from them is going to be minuscule.

 

Because, strangely enough, they aren't supposed to be capitalized when spelled out, only when abbreviated. (Don't ask me why—I don't make up the rules!)

Indeed, from what I remember reading of this design, it operates only sporadically under high acceleration, somewhat like how a NO2 system gets used. Under normal operation, the blower isn't operating, and the engine works as a normally aspirated engine. The batteries for the blower are separate from the normal car battery, and presumably they're rated for very high current/short duration applications.

I tend to agree that the overall design is of pretty limited use at best. Limited usefulness is still a big step up from the previous designs offered for sale, which were used mainly to move money from the pockets of clueless persons into the pockets of unscrupulous merchants.

 

Whatchu know bout my leaf blower with a string tied to the throttle? There is no reason why these would not work (IF AND ONLY IF THE CURRENT DRAW IS CORRECT) It's just not worth the money. For the same price you could DIY turbo.

 

Old thread. But I was just stumbled upon it and it looks like it's been released (this supercharger kit thing)

Some of the people that posted here think it's similar to the eBay electric fans, those are JUST fans no compresor, this actually has a compressor driven by the electric motor, which creates boost.

 

So then why not just get an air compressor and lead a hose straight to the intake?

 

CFM vs PSI

 

There is no reason that a cheap working electric supercharger can't be built. I have 20ah 48v LiFePO4 batteries capable of 20C output that I used for my electric bicycle. That's 19,200 watts of power for 3 minutes (25 hp). It should only take about 10hp to power a blower at about a 1.8 pressure ratio at about 160-180 CFM. The batteries can power 10hp for 7.5 minutes.

My batteries only weigh 20lbs and cost $350

This setup, from a drag racing perspective, is superior in every way to a traditional turbocharger or supercharger. 0 exhaust restriction, 0 parasitic drag, negligible weight penalty, and 100% boost BEFORE the launch even happens.

Each 1/4mi run lasts 15 seconds at most. That's 30 runs before you have to charge the batteries! These batteries are capable of 5c charge rates so they can be charged from dead to full in less than 15 minutes.

I have no idea why something like this is not on the market.

The most difficult part of the whole thing would be building a balance charger into the car so you don't have to charge the batteries yourself.

I'll stick to my self-converted 32 mph mid-drive Ebike with a 50mile range for now :-p

 

offtrack, do you know that a garden hose flows the same rate at a higher pressure if you partially cover the end with your thumb?

 

I do. I'm pretty sure I was just joking when asking my question. But I'll follow it up with a more serious question: if electric superchargers really worked why don't vehicle manufacturers use them to boost (no pun intended) power if they are so inexpensive? Why do racers still use traditional turbo and superchargers if the electric ones are so much better (less expensive, instant power, negligible weight, etc)?

 

Because lead acid sucks at high discharge rates. Peukert's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lipo and LiFePO4 are great for this application but the batteries are very volatile and a pain to charge due to the need for balancing. The technology is relatively new.

Stock electrical systems are 12v. 12v sucks at turning anything fast. 48v+ is ideal. 4 lead acid batteries is not practical. Put quite simply the ROI is not worth the development cost on any major scale. A normal alternator will not charge these batteries fast enough for every consumer. Many would complain that they can't stay in boost forever. Part throttle operation would suck because it's either all or nothing. Lots of draw backs.

BUT

If you want to push something reasonable like a 1.3-1.5 pressure ratio at full throttle (like N2O) there is no reason why an electric supercharger wont work. It could be really cheap. like 1k cheap. 1k for a 30%-40% power boost is a damn good deal.

 

This is a 13hp electric brushless motor for $400. At 48v it spins at 7200 rpms

Turnigy RotoMax 150cc Size Brushless Outrunner Motor