Prodrive creates the P2 sports car

"The system is not ready for production yet, but it has shown great potential. It will make P2 far more flexible to drive as without the turbo-lag you don’t have to drop down a gear to get the acceleration you want," said Hemming.

As well as enhancing the performance of turbo-charged cars, in the longer term it could provide a solution to the downsizing of engines in cars and so help improve fuel economy and reduce emissions.

"With an anti-lag system, you could in theory replace a normally aspirated, two litre engine with a turbo-charged one litre engine. This would typically reduce fuel consumption by about 25 per cent without any loss in performance," said Hemming.

Prodrive is already talking to a vehicle manufacturer about the application of this system.

ATD – Active Torque Dynamics

To use the car’s power more effectively, Prodrive’s ATD system is fitted to P2’s drivetrain. Prodrive has been developing this system for five years and has already built 12 demonstrators for a variety of vehicle manufacturers for different applications on four, rear and front wheel drive cars, ranging from large SUVs to supercars.

The principle of ATD is to keep a vehicle going where the driver wants it to go, by modulating the torque at the road wheels using active differentials rather than applying the brakes, as is the case with stability systems such as ESP.

"Road cars are generally driven in the ‘linear region’ where a certain input to the steering wheel results in a corresponding cornering rate of the car," said Damian Harty, chief engineer, dynamics. "However, when something unexpected happens, drivers tend to apply more steering angle than the vehicle can actually follow (around 10 degrees at the roadwheels). The vehicle behaviour changes significantly and the car does not go where the driver wants. This change is enough to confuse many people at a critical moment and often leads to loss of control in emergency situations. ATD extends this ‘linear’ region, making the vehicle much more controllable in emergencies."

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