Audi’s Head of Powertrain Development, Wolfgang Hatz, says the company will expand its range of turbocharged petrol and diesel engines and move to multi-turbo engines as it downsizes powerplants and searches for performance advantages over its rivals.
Speaking exclusively with the Carsales Network at the recent Geneva Motor Show, the German marque’s engine and drivetrain boss confirmed the company was working on smaller powerplants, but commented that already some model ranges within the Audi line-up had reached the extent of their capacity reduction.
“Downsizing is on everybody’s mind,” Hatz commented.
“But it is not something we have adopted in the last few months — we did it always. We started it with our turbo FSI strategy — if you look at the performances we can achieve with our four-cylinder range.
“Downsizing is working well if the customer doesn’t perceive the downsizing in itself. You still have to have ‘fun to drive’ [in an Audi] and I think we can do so with our TFSI engines. If you look for example at the four-cylinder turbo engine on the A5 or A4 with the new AVS [variable valve system] you can see what is possible. You even don’t think about that you need a six-cylinder in that car any more,” Hatz opined.
But Hatz admits that certain vehicle segments have natural capacity ‘hard decks’. For instance, he says Audi is unlikely to go below 2.0-litres on cars like the A6.
“If you look at the size of A6, I would say that our current 2.0 TFSI with high low-end torque [is the lower capacity limit] — we would not do it much smaller. This [engine] is — for an A6 — a very nice powertrain, as it has a lot of torque — in the future more than 350Nm — and that makes the car really move,” Hatz said.
The powertrain offers the new supercharged 3.0 V6 in the S4 as evidence of downsizing in performance applications. He says though the mechanical forced induction system is “not a long term strategy” for the brand.
“Our main technology is turbocharging and direct injection,” Hatz reiterated.
“Why we did the supercharged version [of the V6]? Mainly the market for this supercharged engine is North America. We made a long concept with bi-turbo versions and supercharged versions and in the end we decide with the supercharged.
“There are always aspects where the turbocharged [engine] is better or the supercharged, but it also was a decision of architecture [packaging]. With the 90-degree V6 we had a nice compact design with the supercharger between the cylinder banks and overall the efficiency is very close [between turbo and supercharged] but the pick-up is better with the supercharger.”
Multi-turbo engines will be a direct development for the manufacturer, he says… And a method to better separate Audi’s engines from the powerplants used across the Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG), the engine boss intimates.
He says bi-turbo installations on petrol and diesel engines like the current 2.0-litre units will help deliver big-engine horsepower and torque, but with seemingly conflicting gains in fuel consumption and emissions.
“We will see, for sure, biturbo solutions even on the four-cylinder [petrol] range in the medium term,” Hatz confirms.
“Our 1.4 turbo in A3 range shows monoturbo can be good, but if you push the performance, then you need bi-turbo or turbo-supercharged combinations. We will expand the turbos in the smaller range very soon,” he says.
On the diesel front, Audi, he says is committed to offering higher performance diesels — and not just in its SUVs. Evidence of the company’s interest in diesel performance cars will arrive Down under later this year with the arrival of the TT TDI.
Hatz stops short of greenlighting an RS diesel, however.
“I don’t know whether we’d call it [a high performance diesel model] an RS, but in the future we will use [more] high performance diesels… Like the V12 in the Q7 — it is an RS model, but we don’t call it an RS model…
“Definitely we will have higher performance diesels in our range… We have to expand the V6 range — that’s one of the tasks. For the four-cylinder range [there are plans] as well.
“We have a nice V8 [turbodiesel] and we will develop this further. I know competitors are going out of this segment, [but] for us the V8 TDI is a big success — so we will continue [to develop] this V8 in the future,” Hatz confirms.
In contrast to the word from Audi’s grass roots engineers, Hatz is not as sure about the future for the company’s new five-cylinder engine — launched in the TT RS at Geneva
Though insiders confirmed that the company is working on a longitudinal version of the five, Hatz was careful about confirming the engine would see the light of day in models like the A4 and A5.
“At the moment there is no plan to market [the five-cylinder engine] in the longitudinal platform. To be honest, in the power range beyond 300hp we think we will use most likely the six-cylinder engine,” he hedged.
But he admits the new five is a differentiator for the brand.
“We look at the maximum synergies [with engines across the VAG] but we want to keep the peak points of any specified engine [type] for our brand. That’s [the inline five] something like a peak technology — like we are saying. That is exclusive… Specifically for Audi,” Hatz stated.
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