The timing of Volkswagen Group of America’s latest fuel-efficient TDI Clean Diesel engine – assigned EA288 – has been confirmed by the company’s General Manager, Energy and Environmental Office, Oliver Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt announced during a speech at the Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich. that the latest engine will be used to run the 2015 Golf, Beetle, Passat, and Jetta, which are expected to be available in dealer showrooms in the latter half of the next year.
This recent announcement marks the company’s continual success it has obtained in diesel technology. Till date, the Volkswagen Group of America has successfully sold over 47,000 clean diesel vehicles, and more than 10,000 of these vehicles were sold in the month of July alone. These figures indicate the sale of nearly 78% diesel passenger cars in United States this year.
“The Volkswagen Group is a leader in clean diesel technology,” said Schmidt. “With the introduction of the new EA288 engine, we are excited that our family of TDI Clean Diesel vehicles is continuing to improve and will be even more clean, fuel efficient and powerful.”
The latest EA288 model will ultimately take place of all the 2.0-liter TDI Clean Diesel engines of Audi and Volkswagen TDI Clean Diesel models. Being a common-rail, turbocharged direct-injection four-cylinder engine, EA288 easily manages to make 236 pound-feet of torque and 150 horsepower, which is 10 HP more as compared to the engine currently in use. The only thing this engine shares with the previous one is the bore spacing, and the company has introduced a number of changes in the latest engine in order to reduce the emissions, for example, by using a complex exhaust gas recirculation system, which comes with high pressure EGR and a cooled low-pressure EGR; as well as through incorporating the water-cooled intercooler and the EGR valve with the intake manifold. This results in an improvement in throttle response of the vehicle. Another change introduced by the company is the packaging of the exhaust after-treatment components near the engine by joining DPF and the SCR Catalyst.
Other modifications have also been made to reduce friction and optimize fuel economy, and the engine includes low-friction bearings for the camshaft and balancer shafts, as well as piston rings with lower pre-tension, while the oil pump is in the form of a two-stage device having volumetric flow regulation.