I remember hearing about the days of the early 911 Turbos (if my memory's correct) where you'd get a bunch of boost all at once... We've definitely come a long way!
Edit: Also bad for the valvetrain. 4T engines aren't really meant to be run as 2T..
https://www.motortrend.com/news/2025-porsche-911-gts-t-hybri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volkswagen_Group_diese...
When a tech path costs too much for F1, that's a good sign you won't be seeing it in a GM product any time soon.
OP system is just using a computer to get on the gas a little faster when the driver hits the pedal quickly.
In theory (though not a mechanic, just have an interest in this), the best middle-ground would be to retain the same design but add a motor to the turbocharger shaft which would mainly be reserved for spool ups -- is that what they're doing?
GM is doing nothing of the sort, it's just an ECU map. Guessing here, but if driver presses on the gas quickly (throttle accel > some set value), juice the engine map to create extra exhaust pressure to spool up the turbo impeller. It's all software.
Horse emissions are really bad too.
I feel similar to you in that complexity over time only locks out the user.
However I certainly do not miss a choke or having to mess with a carb in general on my road going vehicle.
From what I've heard, it's somewhat of a rarity in the US, but it's very widely used in Europe.
They need a fast sweet car, and not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ultimately it's rooted in the need for procreation, social status, and play.
Increasing their efficiency might not be the ultimate endgame, but it sure is a positive increment.
People pick the best option, while worse option can creep from being awful to just a close second, and then suddenly become the best option.
There's a critical point at which there's enough EV infrastructure to overcome objections, available cars become cheap enough, and then there's hardly any reason to pick gas cars that are slower, laggier, noisier, smelly, more expensive to run and can't be refuelled at home.
Even the type of person who buys a 3 year old car cannot (will not?) afford a payments on a new car accounting for the gas savings. They will buy what they can get - but they also will influence the market as they are likely to be sensible (often a new car is not sensible) and so willing to pay extra for the EV, and this in turn will put pressure on the new cars since trade in value is very important to most people who buy a new car (which is sensible, but it is the banks forcing this on the buyers)
Second order effects like load on an aging power grid could easily cause speed bumps.
I hope you’re right, but I don’t know I could bet on it
Dual-clutch transmissions especially need to anticipate the next move as either an upshift or dowshift.
This is just extending that idea to the engine itself.
You know what that means: There will be lag in all unanticipated situations.
I spent 1.5+ years on my 2005 car's ECU to reverse engineer most of the maps, since no public tuning files existed. I then went and spent 1 year on the TCM for which again, no tuning files existed. With the patent files, I was able to discover the algorithms and maps, and am even in IDA as I write this, and in Ghidra emulating some code.
Although with turbocharged engines, you can turn the power up to the point where longevity goes way down. Still, you could give people a power limit knob they could turn at their own risk to have access to the whole Pareto frontier of performance and longevity. That'd leave no room for tuners.
Depends on the car. See Supplemental Federal Test Procedure US06[0], required by the EPA for light-duty vehicle certification since 2007.
It is also largely irrelevant in the real world: nobody is going to tune a car to have mediocre part-throttle performance but then go all-out on full-throttle.
0 - https://www.epa.gov/vehicle-and-fuel-emissions-testing/dynam...
Secondly, there’s a reason you see this with EVs (Tesla’s “ludicrous speed” mode) but not ICE cars apart from “sport modes” and the like: the ICE cars can’t be offered with the knob you suggest, because the car has to meet emissions requirements at any tuning level, and any level of tuning is going to have a performance/emissions trade-off.
And actually, I think there is similar tech in "speaker systems" already. An "older" one that I've read about is from RCF (an old+big Italian company with systems ranging from desktop to festival size), and they call it [Bass Motion Control](https://www.rcf.it/en/art-9-series);
> The BMC method works by creating a complete map of the dynamic behavior of the woofer, to generate a custom algorithm that only limits over-excursions. This gives total freedom of signal reproduction to the transducer. When high-pass filters normally protect the woofer motion from becoming destructive but change the phase behavior, the new BMC algorithm breaks conventional rules.
Now I don't know how effective RCF's approach truly is, but another company that is doing "big-things" is Dirac. They released a blog post about a year ago titled [Boosting Audio System Sustainability with Dirac](https://www.dirac.com/blog/boosting-audio-system-sustainabil...), and there is a section called Enhancing performance with optimized components;
> By employing Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks, we can make the driving force on the voice coil (the part of the speaker that turns electricity into sound) more consistent, improving the mechanical design and compensating for magnetic limitations.
> NLC adjusts the voice coil current to correct force factor irregularities (inconsistencies in the voice coil’s efficiency) without requiring complex mechanical measurements. In tests with an otherwise suboptimal driver, our technology reduced distortion by 10 dB, nearly matching the performance of a well-designed driver.
1. GM is using an ML model for their "torque management" which is a fancy of of saying a linear feel pedal. 2. This new generation of ecu has more encryption... every new generation of GM ecu has more lockouts.
The author alludes to how tuner will not be able to beat GM's torque mapping controls with aftermarket tuning. Sure... but often times turners are not targeting the drivablity mapping of an OEM tune, they are targeting fuel, ignition, and or boost mapping to compensate for better fuels, more VE (turbos), or other power adders.
TBH on flagship sports cars, we are on the knifes edge of optimizations for most platforms; most aftermarket solutions are now just lop-siding the maximized "any condition" performance OE's seek for simply more power. Power that typically will sacrifice either low end, drivability, and or reliability. The sweet spot for performance tuning now a days exist in the middle range of vehicles for most manufactures where engines are not focused on their ultimate tuning potential VS reliability.
This all being said, these torque management strategies are nothing new, GM is just using fancy math blocks within their ecu that can account for more inputs and a higher resolution. Modern standalone ecus like Emtron and Motec utilize these types of torque strategies to better pair with modern high end transmissions like the 8hp90 and DL800. These transmissions need to communicate with the ECU to ensure power delivery from the engine works with shifting performance and clutch engagement.
For example, enabling power enrichment at less throttle opening will improve performance and allow you to run a little bit more timing, but also increase hydrocarbon emissions.
Look at Holley aka Dinan aka APR. They are a publicly traded tuning company. The aftermarket tuning they offer meets emissions standards while still offering better performance than OEM. So yes they are not "legally" required, they still do it to meet state and national laws and to avoid toe stepping.
Yes the little guy tuners don't really care about NOX emissions guidelines mostly because they have no way of measuring the difference their tunes may produce. At the end of the day most OE emissions systems will catch these emissions, and pretty much all aftermarket tuners do not endorse removing emissions systems. to say a tune, or aftermarket parts result in worse emissions is not really the truth. to say the end user removing their cats or emissions systems results in worse emissions is true.
In the area of emissions management aftermarkets have found symbiosis. Not only has there become aftermarket manufactures of higher performing both in emissions and performance catalytic converters (G-Sport by GESi). But alot of tuners acknowledge that engine performance can be improved with a well catalyzed exhaust system.
PedroBatista•8mo ago
Given the recent past about sensors and reliability I’m adding even more will be great for reliability and cost.
I’m sure this design came from the committee of geniuses who brought us the wet belt.
Rant over. (Sorry)
nottorp•8mo ago