While electric power seems to be the future for most passenger cars, from commuters to mass-market vehicles, hydrogen the power units were not completely turned off. Hydrogen internal combustion even revives a little after a long hiatus when BMW has developed a hydrogen V12 and Mazda has created several hydrogen rotary engines. Toyota recently touted a hydrogen-powered three-cylinder Corolla in racing, and Porsche playing with the idea. It announced that it looked at how it could replace the 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 for performance and achieve the same power as the gas version without threw out. Unfortunately, it’s only virtual now.
Yes, Porsche has created a completely virtual V8 with a hydrogen engine. But this is not just some fantasy. Porsche used advanced modeling and serious engineering to figure out what would need to change to make hydrogen work. One of the key issues was the need for more air for equivalent power and clean burning. This required more amplification and less compression. But Porsche noted that the lower combustion temperatures from burning hydrogen led to lower exhaust velocities and difficulty getting the turbos to spin fast enough. So Porsche has developed a number of options to get around this with electrically assisted turbochargers, different valves and adjustable intake vanes to achieve the required boost levels (diagrams of which are shown above).
The results sound promising. Porsche claims an engine capacity of 590 horsepower. It also lacks carbon and particulate emissions because it burns hydrogen. Nitrogen oxides were also very low, which is equivalent air The quality index will be classified as good air quality. The company also ran simulations with the car’s 5,832-pound engine and achieved a Nurburgring lap time of 8 minutes, 20.2 seconds.
Porsche says it’s unlikely to actually produce this particular engine, but it certainly seems like the company could apply what it’s learned to some kind of powertrain in the future. At least it looks like he will build an actual prototype of one of the current engines or a future engine.
Related video:
https://www.autoblog.com/2022/08/18/porsche-hydrogen-ice-internal-combustion-engine-v8-virtual-development/