Porsche Wants to Cool its Hybrids’ Batteries With Electric Turbos

It is fascinating how various hybrid vehicles manage the relationship between their batteries, motors, and internal combustion engines. It’s a tricky problem, and sometimes the solutions are extremely interesting even if their true effectiveness is open to question. In a patent published in late May, Porsche lays out an interesting way to address the issue of battery cooling. The solution it comes to, however, is a little unorthodox.In a nutshell, Porsche wants to cool a hybrid car’s batteries using pressurized air from the engine’s turbocharger, preferably an electric one. The automaker details a layout where the battery, or perhaps even individual battery cells, are placed in the engine’s intake tract to achieve this. That way, the boosted air provides additional pressure to the intake side of the engine and pulls heat from the battery. The document notes that the air might be…

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