Photo: bmw
We’ve talked about BMW’s plans to use direct water injection on its cars to decrease the engine temperature but so far we’ve been focusing on performance cars like the M4 GTS. As a matter of fact, most people thought that the Germans will only be using this kind of tech on performance models.
Well, as it turns out, we were wrong. BMW wants to use direct water injection on all of its cars in the future and they just offered a preview of what’s possible with it using a 1 Series prototype.
The car was presented to journalists at Miramar in France and it boasted a 1.5-liter 3-cylinder turbocharged engine that was good for no less than 218 HP. That’s extremely close to the 231 HP of the unit on the BMW i8 which is currently the engine with the most HP per liter from the entire line-up in Munich. This was all possible thanks to direct water injection.
The water in injected as a fine spray into the intake manifold plenum chamber and it evaporates due to the temperature. However, by doing so it also reduces the combustion temperature in the engine by around 25 degrees Celsius.
Not only does this allow the cars to achieve outputs up to 10 percent better on average but it also decreases fuel consumption by up to 8 percent, depending on the car and driving style.
The system uses a reservoir located in the back and a pump that sends the water to the engine bay. The reservoir is about a gallon in size and can be replenished using the water resulted from the AC condensation or other sources.
Therefore, BMW says that you won’t have to refill it yourself too soon but every year or so if you don’t use AC. Otherwise, the car could go for even longer stretches thanks to the water provided by heavy air conditioning usage.
Using this system on cars has been around for ages, especially when it comes to motorsport. However, no other manufacturer used it on production cars and BMW will probably be the first one to do it. The best news for us is that it will probably also make it to M cars and the output levels will go extremely high without increasing the size of the engines used.
The car was presented to journalists at Miramar in France and it boasted a 1.5-liter 3-cylinder turbocharged engine that was good for no less than 218 HP. That’s extremely close to the 231 HP of the unit on the BMW i8 which is currently the engine with the most HP per liter from the entire line-up in Munich. This was all possible thanks to direct water injection.
What is it?
Direct water injection is a system that sprays water into the combustion chamber to reduce the temperature to increase efficiency and power. At the same time, if allows engineers to increase the compression ratio without fear of damaging any parts thanks to reduced knock.The water in injected as a fine spray into the intake manifold plenum chamber and it evaporates due to the temperature. However, by doing so it also reduces the combustion temperature in the engine by around 25 degrees Celsius.
Not only does this allow the cars to achieve outputs up to 10 percent better on average but it also decreases fuel consumption by up to 8 percent, depending on the car and driving style.
The system uses a reservoir located in the back and a pump that sends the water to the engine bay. The reservoir is about a gallon in size and can be replenished using the water resulted from the AC condensation or other sources.
Therefore, BMW says that you won’t have to refill it yourself too soon but every year or so if you don’t use AC. Otherwise, the car could go for even longer stretches thanks to the water provided by heavy air conditioning usage.
Using this system on cars has been around for ages, especially when it comes to motorsport. However, no other manufacturer used it on production cars and BMW will probably be the first one to do it. The best news for us is that it will probably also make it to M cars and the output levels will go extremely high without increasing the size of the engines used.
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