Chevy Volt

[JimboPalmer]

I would question the wisdom of turbocharging the Prius without switching to an electric oil pump to keep the turbo cooled with the engine off. The Gen III Prius designers went to a lot of work to eliminate the belts, so adding a belt driven supercharger is a step backwards, perhaps a electric supercharger driven by the HV battery?

An individual with more mechanical know how than good sense has already turbo charged and supercharged a Gen I Prius, he found that it was not so much faster, as it was less likely to go to turtle mode. The extra power went to the battery, not the wheels. Toyota would be able to reprogram that, but we wouldn't.

I am not a Volt expert, (it is still a moving target) but I do not believe the ICE ever powers the wheels directly, so a more powerful engine would not make it faster, just less likely to discharge the battery. You would have to redesign the electric motor and battery to get more performance from a more powerful ICE in a Volt, I think.

[JimboPalmer]

I worked for 15 years at an open pit gold mine. The Haul trucks are diesel electric series Hybrids. The open pit has temperature inversions, on cold days it acts as a cap to hold in the diesel fumes. To pollute less the company designed an electric trolley system, the truck would connect to overhead wires for power. On diesel they did 7 MPH out of the pit,using full throttle; the trolley would allow 11 MPH, while idling.

It did not take the drivers a week to realize that on trolley and at full throttle they could do 14 MPH, so we never went to no fumes, but going 14 MPH versus 7, they did halve the time at full throttle, so halved the pollution.

This is why I am reluctant to claim turbocharging the Volt will have no performance gains, I don't trust the drivers.