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Porsche has lodged a patent software for a W18 petrol engine – a extremely complicated “area optimised” inside combustion engine which may very well be utilized in a variety of upcoming high-performance fashions, maybe together with a brand new hypercar.
A patent submitting first lodged in April 2024 then revealed final week and now uncovered by Motor1 reveals detailed drawings of the brand new engine, which Porsche stated may very well be configured in nine-, 15- or 18-cylinder layouts relying on the specified final result and car software.
Porsche – which named a brand new CEO final week – has not made any official touch upon the submitting, and it doesn’t essentially imply the brand new engine design will likely be put into manufacturing, as a result of automakers usually lodge patents to forestall rivals beating them to related ideas.
Whereas the German efficiency automobile has made some cracking engines by its historical past together with V8s, it’s most well-known for its flat-six ‘boxer’ engine format within the iconic 911 sports activities automobile.
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In designing the W18, it has included three inline six-cylinder blocks sharing a typical crankshaft.
The patent software says every financial institution is modular, so the engine could be reconfigured to incorporate three (W9), 5 (W15) or six cylinders (W18) in every again, and every cylinder block is brief to take up much less total area.
Porsche additionally defined within the submitting that the format permits environment friendly cooling, with the new exhaust operating beneath and between cylinders, away from cooler recent air being piped into the highest of the engine.
As defined by Motor1, this brings higher efficiency and in addition permits turbocharging, with a possible triple-turbo W18 engine solely needing bodily area much like a standard straight-six engine.
This might enable it to be put in in smaller autos than a V-engine, with the ‘W’ successfully shaped by two overlapping vees – one thing seen within the Bugatti Chiron hypercar and different fashions from the Volkswagen Group, Porsche’s father or mother firm.
The Chiron used an 8.0-litre quad-turbo petrol W16 engine designed by legendary engineer Karl Piech. Successfully shaped by a pair of narrow-angle V8s, it creating 1177kW of energy and 1600Nm of torque.
The powertrain helped the Chiron Tremendous Sport 300+ take over from the Bugatti Veyron – which used an earlier model of the identical engine – because the world’s quickest manufacturing automobile, with a high pace 490.48km/h.
The W16 will make approach for a V16-based plug-in hybrid powertrain in future Bugatti fashions, with the ultimate iteration of the W16 powering the Bugatti Brouillard and Mistral fashions.
Volkswagen additionally put a 6.0-litre 72-degree W12 engine into manufacturing in 2001. It was utilized in a raft of fashions together with the Audi A8, the Bentley Continental GT, and the not too long ago discontinued Volkswagen Touareg.
The final W12 engine was fitted within the 2024 Volkswagen Phaeton massive sedan, a mannequin not offered in Australia.
Volkswagen has additionally performed with narrow-angle V6s in efficiency fashions together with the Golf R32 and Passat R36, which employed a space-saving 15-degree financial institution angle.
Porsche not too long ago wound again its earlier electrical car (EV) gross sales targets, and confirmed it can proceed to provide petrol variations of the next-generation 718 Boxster and Cayman sports activities vehicles, which have been meant to be EV-only.
In September, it additionally introduced the cancellation of plans for an all-electric new flagship SUV codenamed K1, which is able to now be supplied with plug-in hybrid energy, amid what the automaker described as “new market realities”.
The revised technique got here after now-departing Porsche CEO Oliver Blume admitted the corporate’s enterprise mannequin “not works”.
Porsche’s final street-legal hypercar, the 918 Spyder, was produced between 2013 and 2015, and powered by a 4.6-litre V8-based plug-in hybrid system. Its successor was doubtlessly previewed by the glossy all-electric Mission X idea in 2023, so whether or not this new W engine powers a future hypercar as a substitute – or nothing in any respect – stays to be seen.
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