Honeywell Turbo Technologies and the Honda Amaze - a sign of things to come

When the Honda Amaze launched back in April of this year, it pretty much took the market by storm. Apart from the obvious qualities of the car, its 1.5-litre iDTEC engine was pretty much the talk of the town, being Honda’s first diesel mill in India. The all-aluminium motor is certainly a gem, and as they say, any good machine is the sum of its parts, but some parts of course are more special than others. One of these parts that makes this iDTEC engine so special is its turbocharger which is made by none other than Honeywell Turbo Technologies. Now this name might not be instantly familiar to even the most ardent auto enthusiast, but mention the name ‘Garrett’ and immediately images of Fast and Furious cars with shrill turbocharger blow-off whistles come to mind. Garrett, a name that is pretty much synonymous with turbochargers these days is a brand owned by Honeywell Turbo Technologies - a company has a long history of making breakthrough innovations in turbocharger technologies and has a collective experience of producing over 100 million turbos since its inception back in 1936.

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With fuel costs rising year on year and governments around the world putting serious pressure on auto manufacturers with stricter and stricter emissions norms, engine downsizing has become the need of the hour. It is thanks to this downsizing that turbochargers are rapidly gaining significance in today’s automotive scenario and companies like Honeywell are becoming more relevant than ever before. So much so, that the company designs turbos for about 100 new engines from a variety of international auto makers each year. In fact, the humble turbocharger has not only become ubiquitous in diesel engines, modern gasoline engines too are on the chopping block having their blocks chopped off in lieu of smaller capacity turbocharged mills. In Europe, where emissions regulations are probably the most stringent as compared to anywhere else in the world, almost 75-percent of all automobiles sold these days (diesel and petrol combined) use turbocharging as a means to increase power output, produce less CO2 and boost fuel economy.

But coming back to the case of the Honda Amaze, it was Honeywell’s philosophy of ‘by east, for east’ which helped in the development of the 1.5-litre iDTEC’s turbocharger. As opposed to just selecting a turbocharger from the company’s existing product line up and slapping it on the engine, working closely with the manufacturer (Honda in this case) to specially develop a turbocharger that would be suited for the type of operating conditions which are prevalent in India was critical. One of the largest considerations was NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness) levels. In Europe, where most cars come with solid noise insulation built in, the engine’s noise and vibrations are absorbed effectively by car’s body. As opposed to this, cars made for developing markets like India lack such high amounts of insulation and these vibrations need to be eliminated at the engine level itself. What Honeywell ended up with was a turbocharger built on one of their smallest frame sizes, which even though uses a conventional wastegate-type design, provides a lack of turbo lag comparable to a variable geometry turbine. And of course, this Garrett turbo plays a huge role in the brilliant fuel efficiency that the Amaze iDTEC returns – a whopping 21kmpl, which we at ZigWheels achieved in our own real world test cycle.

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HTT has been an instrumental force behind Audi's domination at The 24 Hours of Le Mans in recent years

Currently in India, turbocharger penetration stands at about 45-percent, most of which is thanks to the abundance of diesel engines. And when it comes to diesels in India, Honeywell has a wealth of experience as Garrett turbochargers are already a part of many automobiles here such as the India eV2, the Chevrolet Sail sedan and hatch as well as Daimler and Ashok Leyland four-cylinder trucks, just to name a few. Now though, slowly, but surely we’re seeing many auto makers bringing out turbocharged gasoline engined cars into the Indian market. Two of the latest of these are the Volkswagen Polo GT TSI with its brilliant 1.2-litre, 105 PS direct injection 4-cylinder motor and Ford’s technological masterpiece, the 1.0-litre, 125 PS, 3-cylinder EcoBoost engine in the EcoSport SUV. These two engines are shining examples of how smaller capacity engines with forced induction can take over the mantle from larger, naturally-aspirated ones offering similar power levels at a fraction of the emissions and fuel consumption. And here, companies like Honeywell Turbo Technologies are set to play an even bigger role in making the automotive world (and possibly the rest of it as well) a much better place.