‘Hot Vee’ Engines: Why Do These Matter?
Jane Lu
· 3 min read
Car technology
continues to improve, especially as automakers place a bigger focus on software. Car engines
are also seeing new upgrades.One of the latest innovations to hit the auto world is the "hot vee" engine.
Motor Trend
reported that these are becoming more common in modern cars. What are hot vee engines and how are they beneficial?
What are hot vee engines?
A hot vee engine makes the engine run more efficiently than it did before. To create this, the engineers rearrange critical engine components in a turbocharged engine that improves packaging and efficiency.
Motor Trend said that "The hot in "hot vee" refers to the exhaust system and where it's located. The cold side is the intake." After a lot of experimentation, the intake and exhaust ports are now typically located on opposite sides of the internal combustion engine.
"Air and fuel are drawn into the cold side, are combusted, and exhaust is pushed out the hot side. Think of a single cylinder, and it's easy to picture the two sides," as reported by Motor Trend.
To break it down a little further, there are two banks of cylinders on an engine that are joined by a "V" configuration. Each bank has its own hot and cold side. This is true for most engines, but the hot vee engine switches things up.
In your traditional aspirated engine, the cold side is located on the inside, while the hot one is on the outside. In a hot vee engine, the turbochargers are located inside the V. The intake and exhaust are also reversed. So does this actually make a difference?
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How are hot vee engines better than traditional ones?
Hot vee engines have a better layout for turbochargers that reduces lag. The problem with turbocharged engines is that they're larger than traditional aspirated engines. The more room they take up, the bigger and heavier the vehicle will be.
The new arrangement of parts allows turbochargers to take up less space and pushes them as close to the exhaust ports as possible. A twin-turbocharged engine can then fit into a space designed for a compact naturally aspirated engine. This improves power, response, and efficiency.
Which cars feature hot vee engines?
The V-8 is the most common type of hot vee engine and it’s most often used in high-end luxury cars. The BMW X6 was the first to use hot vee engines. After that, the V-8 was adopted by Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Audi.
Just as safety features like backup cameras and huge infotainment screens have made their way to non-luxury vehicles, so has the hot vee. Toyota has filed a patent for its own hot vee engine, which will be used on both Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Cadillac also had the layout for its short-lived Blackwing V-8 in the Cadillac CT6.
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