No doubt some of you have seen a small article in Motor Magazines "hot tuner" autumn edition about something called an Electrocharger. This device adds 135Nm of torque (no power figure given) by way of an electric motor which doubles as an alternator attached to the crank by a belt drive system.

Motor make no comment on it's usefullness and the web site http://www.alphamaleperformance.com/pages/1/index.htm doesn't give a whole lot of info either.

It says it's currently made for Integras, Civics and Focuses but it looks so basic I reckon it could be custom fitted to anything.



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I see the concept, but I think they are charging way too much.

See if you agree me on what I think this device is trying to do;
when you demand fast acceleration,(probably switched on via a switch) it decouples it self using some sort to electronic control clutch to the pulley, rendering the electrocharger pulley 'almost' frictionless so it frees up some power from the crank, hence output power is slightly increased. In lemans terms, it removes the alternator from the system for a short period of time, during this time, the car is powered by this secondary battery sitting in your boot (as well as your own car battery). I would guess the power increase would be similar to that if you remove your accessories belt, my guess would be 10hp or so.

Furthermore, I think it's useful for small cc cars, hence they only make them for civics and focus, because the small CC cars suffer more to power stealing features such as things coupled to the drive belt and accessory belts than that of high CC cars.

Nevertheless, I believe if money was not a problem, then every little bit helps.

My conclusion, I don't think this device will increase you potential power, but it will free up some of your potential power.

feel free to add or correct me.

My conclusion, I don't think this device will increase you potential power, but it will frees up power some of your potential power.

Nicely put :cool:

In lemans terms, it removes the alternator from the system for a short period of time, during this time, the car is powered by this secondary battery sitting in your boot (as well as your own car battery). I would guess the power increase would be similar to that if you remove your accessories belt, my guess would be 10hp or so.
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I think what is actually happening is that the electric motor/altenator is acting like a auxilliary powerplant. They claim 135Nm of torque which couldn't be achieved just by disengaging the existing altenator so I think it's actually delivering drive to the crank via the belt.

The battery is a type of capacitor and has the ability to discharge a large amount of power very quickly when the accelerator is depressed.

It sounds pretty simple, kind of like a rudimentary hybrid system.

it seems to me that an electric motor that would have any real power worth contributing would be too big, even a washing machine size not worth it. if a motor had real power worth adding say 50hp, it would be very hard to match the revs of the electric motor with the engine revs, and would then either slip in the belt or be a brake on the engine power. worst case cause belt to flap or brake and even valve damage. only a little gutless electric motor would be happy being pulled or pushed against its natural speed with the voltage supplied until it burnt out. sorry so sceptical. :cry:

I'm afraid that it can not contribute to the belt system, Control theory states that you can not directly sum/couple two unidentical power plants in parallel.

When it comes to performance enhancing gadgets, I'm sceptical. Hell I'm even sceptical about the mods most of us on this forum swear by like CAI and exhaust mods. :doubt:

What is really irritating (and I've said this before) is that we never ever, ever ,ever have any "real" proof that any of these devices (including the ones fitted to members cars) actually makes any significant or worthwhile improvement in performance. Now, maybe some of them do, but as a potential buyer of these "hot bits" I'd like to see some evidence. :think:

And I don't want to hear the old lame excuse of "it's so hard to get accurate figures from a dyno because of all the variables". :boohoo: I mean, for gods sake, we can put remote controlled vehicles on Mars but we can't accurately measure the power of a car on any given day????

we do have accurate dynos, but it would cost so much more, that it is not worth getting it dyno'ed so accurately... Car Manufacturers can give you the most accurate dyno results if they don't lie about it.

I know for starters that Holden has a Dyno in a Cool cell (Fridge) Tempertures can be controlled to a degree. And the monitoring equipment is always calibrated, so there's no reason why we can't do it, it is just the fact that this facility cost Millions to build. so I don't think any independent car tuning places would fork up this amount of money to build one. it's not worth their trouble.

But other than that, most mods you can use common logic to work out whether they have the potential to work or not. Some are just purely impossible, some are boarder line and some are clearly possible....

Do you agree with me?

Do you agree with me?


I agree 100%.

Like all of us, I'd like to see more science and less speculation about power gain claims by after market accessory manufacturers.

We've had electric turbos, electric water pumps http://www.daviescraig.com.au/ and now the electrocharger http://www.alphamaleperformance.com/pages/1/index.htm

Here are some of the claims:

The Craig Davies electric water pump claims an 8-10% power increase over standard

E-Ram supercharger? claims 6% over standard

Electrocharger claims a massive 135Nm gain over standard


This is great because by these figures if I fit them all to my Ralliart It'll produce 278kW!! :shock:

.....and that's before I fit a programmable chip lol

.....meanwhile, back on planet earth...


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WHat are you talking about
I took this PIc Of Your car yesterday...

think u r right reallyart, if a gain is so small that it wont show a significant gain on the same dyno its not worth doing. theres also proof in econ figures, km/L, 0-100 kmh or 400m times.
something like a water pump cant give the same % for every engine, if it draws 10hp, then on a 100kw engine it would be 10% but on a 200kw engine it would be 5%, so u cant trust their claim of 6% for every engine.
CAI with filter is proven to work for gains of about 5-8kw, ive seen the tests in mags, but on magnas it already has a good CAI stock, only a better filter will make it the same thing as a 300$ aftermarket product for other cars.
i think things like this electric motor in the belt system should be proven b4 they allowed to sell it, i can see potential for a bunch of bent valves and smashed pistons!

Mmmmm....bent valves and smashed pistons. Just reading that has the same effect on me as fingernails down a blackboard :shock:

And Mr Pineapple, have you been stalking me again??

hahhah!!!
:dancin:
i have my Ways of getting information

Well the Electric water pump is a good idea, and would actually improve performance by not robbing power by using a belt driven system. Davies Craig invented the electric radiator fan (this is a pretty rudiumentary thing), would you guys rather say, hey this doesn't make a scrap of difference, and go back to a belt driven fan so as to have more electrical power? lol!!! :D

wow 2 years old. Nice thread mine :thumbsup: .
I reckon it's not worth the effort.

Yeah! lol, only worth the effort if you need to replace the water pump, it is a lot of effort to replace one but little effort to install one of these electric ones! And if you get one cheaply cost effective too because it can be installed easily yourself instead of having a garage pay for it.