For a while now, the Volkswagen Group-owned brands — Porsche, Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, and Volkswagen — have shared vehicle architectures and engines, but Audi and Porsche, which maintain segment rivalries, have gone to great lengths to develop unique engine internals to distinguish performance characteristics between the brands. The powertrains may have started their lives with a common design, but by the time each motor fits under an Audi or Porsche hood, they have little in common with one another.
Now, Autocar is reporting that the two German luxury automakers have entered into a co-engineering program to develop a host of turbocharged V6 and V8 gas engines. All motors will be based on a 90-degree design with 500cc individual cylinder capacities. That translates to 3.0-liters for the V6 and 4.0-liters for the V8.
These new sources of vehicular motivation will replace Audi and Porsche’s current V6 and V8 engines. Their initial design will feature gas-driven turbochargers, but later they will be re-engineered with electric turbochargers based on Audi’s recent experiments on its RS5 TDI Concept and TT Clubsport Turbo.
Though the basic engine architecture is built to 3.0 and 4.0-liter standards, each engine will be scalable to capacity, giving Audi the option of introducing an entry-level, 2.5-liter V6 for example. This would mirror the Atkinson-cycle combustion process of the automaker’s new 2.0-liter gas engine in the A4 Ultra (its most efficient gas-powered A4 variant).
The new suite of V6 and V8 engines, codenamed KoVoMo (derived from the German words Konzern Vee Otto Motoren), will debut in future Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Volkswagen, and possibly Lamborghini models, but it remains to be seen how Porsche and Audi will apply the engines to retain distinct driving characteristics.
