The German luxury carmaker, BMW, is taking all the efforts to improvise its line of internal combustion engines. Although, this has been a regular undertaking by the company ever since 2007, the company still feels that there is a huge scope for improvement. Five years back, BMW introduced the Efficient Dynamic strategy which was incorporated into its new products. This comprised of the fuel efficient petrol and diesel engines, highly efficient transmission systems and advanced aerodynamics.
The greed for better performance engines has led the company to come up with a line of TwinPower turbocharged engines. These are coming in both diesel and petrol versions and starts with the 1.5-litre three-cylinder units. However, all the in-line units will be based on the same design principle, i.e. each one will carry a displacement of 1500cc. These engines will have the capability of being mounted either longitudinally or transversely. Major features include an aluminum block, valvetronic variable valve timing, direct injection and double Vanos infinitely variable camshaft control.
Talking about the capacity, the three-cylinder will have a 1.5-litre capacity and the four and six-cylinder one will have 2 and 3-litre capacities respectively. The petrol and diesel engines will share 40 percent of the parts. However, the petrol versions are expected to deliver a power of 120-222 HP with a torque of 180-240 Nm, whereas the diesel ones will deliver 80-180 HP of power and 225-330 Nm of torque. There is also an addition of a torsional vibration damper which makes it a smoothly running engine. The company claims that these engines are extremely fuel efficient and will provide a rapid response. The 1.5-litre turbocharged engines are expected to be seen in the next generation Mini line-up, which is slated to be launched in 2014.