Toyota Patent Reveals New System That Uses Both Turbo and Supercharger

Toyota is working on a forced induction system that has an electric supercharger and a turbocharger.

We know Toyota has been developing electric superchargers from a previous patent application for a special bearing design, but AutoGuide.com has discovered a patent detailing a supercharging system that is applied to an internal combustion engine. The system includes a turbocharger powered by the engine’s exhaust gasses while the supercharger is powered by electricity. The goal would be a two-stage system where the electric supercharger would provide performance while the turbo spools up, helping eliminate what is called “turbo lag.”

What makes the patent particularly interesting is that Toyota details a supercharging control device “that changes over the supercharging mode between: a single-stage supercharging mode in which the internal combustion engine is only supercharged by the turbocharger, due to electrical driving of the electric supercharger being stopped with the bypass valve in the open position; and a two-stage supercharging mode in which the internal combustion engine is supercharged by both the turbocharger and the electric supercharger, due to electrical driving of the electric supercharger being performed with the bypass valve in the closed position.”

SEE ALSO: The Toyota Supra or Lexus LC Could Get an Electric Supercharger

Basically, the system would have threshold values it uses to switch the bypass valve between open and closed so that the vehicle could dynamically use either both the electric supercharger and turbocharger or just the turbocharger to boost engine performance. Unfortunately, the patent doesn’t go into details about which engine the system would be used on, but if we had to guess, this could preview what the Toyota Supra’s successor will have, or it might be used in the high-performance Lexus LC F to make it more of a supercar competitor.

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