Mazda is no stranger to doing things its own way. Indeed, the Japanese automaker recently announced that it plans to put into production a petrol engine using compression ignition.
And now a new patent application in the United States suggests the brand is also working on an engine employing two conventional turbochargers as well as an electric supercharger.
The abstract from the filing reads as follows:
“A supercharging device for an engine includes an electric supercharger which supercharges intake air; an intercooler which cools intake air discharged from the electric supercharger; and an intake manifold which is disposed substantially horizontally, and is configured to communicate between a downstream end of the intercooler in an intake air flow direction, and intake ports.
“The downstream end of the intercooler is located on a lower end of the intercooler. The downstream end of the intercooler is disposed substantially at the same height as an upstream end of the intake ports. The electric supercharger is disposed below the intercooler along a surface of the engine on an intake side where the intake ports are opened.”
In theory, the electric supercharger comes on song low in the rev range, while the turbochargers add oomph as the revs climb. So, similar to the way the electric compressor and turbochargers in the oil-burning Audi SQ7 and Bentley Bentayga Diesel work, then.
Unearthed by the folks over at Motor Trend, the new longitudinally mounted engine is apparently being developed for a rear-wheel-drive vehicle. And that has, naturally, led to renewed speculation that an RX-8 successor is on the cards…
As the US publication points out, however, this is merely a patent application, so the technology may never even make it to production.