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Saab BioPower 100 Concept
The debate about the greenhouse effect and climate change is more urgent than ever. All over the world people realise that something has to be done about our dependence on fossil fuels.
At Saab we started with our BioPower programme years ago. Today, the Saab 9-5 BioPower is the best selling flex-fuel car in Europe. And we continue in our quest to find new ways of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Now, we’ve found another huge potential with bioethanol. It’s the Saab BioPower 100 Concept.The Saab BioPower 100 Concept has the first production-based engine optimised for pure, eco-friendly E100 fuel, composed entirely of bioethanol. Using this fuel, the 2.0-litre turbo concept engine has a greatly reduced CO2 impact, as well as providing increased power – 300 bhp compared to 150 bhp in the standard 2.0-litre turbo production petrol engine. And in case you’re wondering: the Saab BioPower 100 Concept accelerates from 0-100 kph in 6.6 seconds. It is a win/win proposition: greener motoring with dramatically enhanced power and performance. After all, we want to get to a cleaner environment, and we would like to get there fast.
Size matters, but not in the way it used to. It used to be that the bigger the engine, the better. Not so with the Saab BioPower 100 Concept, which demonstrates the future potential for engine “right-sizing”. This gives the driver the performance characteristics of a large engine without incurring its additional weight, greater complexity and higher fuel consumption. In the Saab BioPower 100 Concept the driver enjoys the perfor-mance of a 4-litre engine from the 2.0-litre turbo concept engine. This is typical of Saab BioPower engines, which take advantage of the higher octane rating of bioethanol. When a similar Saab turbo engine runs on E85 bioethanol it delivers approximately 30 extra horsepower– 150 bhp becomes 180 bhp. Fuelled by E100 bioethanol, and with Saab’s combination of turbocharging and sophisticated engine management, the concept engine delivers 300 bhp.
Running on E100, the 2.0 turbo concept engine also delivers a 65% increase in maximum torque. An exceptionally strong 400 Nm of torque is available between 3000 and 5100 rpm, compared to 240 Nm from 1800-3500 rpm for the unmodified engine on petrol. The secret lies in the E100’s ability to resist harmful self-ignition, or ”knocking”, as the fuel/air mixture is compressed in the cylinder. E100’s high 106 RON octane rating permits a higher engine compression ratio than is normally possible with turbocharging. This gives more power and greater combustion efficiency without risk of knocking. The increased compression ratio has been achieved by modifying the shape of the piston crowns to reduce the volume of the combustion chamber. The result: more torque, more quickly.
Compared to the current Saab 9-5 BioPower engine running on E85, the E100 engine in the Saab BioPower 100 Concept is expected to yield almost 10% lower fuel consumption. Bioethanol burns at a lower temperature than petrol, which reduces thermal stresses on the engine and benefits fuel consumption at higher cruising speeds. With the future addition of direct injection and lean-burn technology, E100 fuel consumption can move even closer to petrol levels. The E100 applications could also be combined with electric hybrid technology, which reduces fuel consumption and the CO2 impact even further. This development was previewed in 2006 in the Saab BioPower Hybrid Concept, the world’s first such vehicle to use pure bioethanol. Although the Saab BioPower 100 Concept is optimised for E100, it still has a flex-fuel capability, which means that it can also run on petrol or E85.
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