Stellantis Group reveals new 'Hurricane' six-cylinder engine

The Stellantis Group has unveiled a new twin-turbocharged in-line six-cylinder engine that is said to be able to deliver power outputs matching those of V8s, designed for use in its vehicles built atop the STLA Large and STLA Frame platforms.

The new engine, called the 'Hurricane', is said to utilise the same design features, including bore and stroke and cylinder spacing, with the globally produced turbocharged 2.0-litre in-line four-cylinder engine as found in the Jeep Wrangler, Wrangler 4xe, Cherokee and the Grand Cherokee 4xe.

Each turbocharger in the Hurricane engine is fed by three of the engine's cylinders, allowing them both to adopt a lower inertia design, which means they can spin up faster and deliver boost to the engine at a lower rpm than a single large turbocharger.

The engine also gets a high-pressure direct fuel injection system that runs at 350 bar. This, combined with injectors mounted centrally in the cylinder head combustion chamber, promotes finer fuel atomisation and super-fine control of fuel delivery into the cylinder for the optimum air/fuel mixture, allowing higher power and lower emissions.

Helping the Hurricane engine deliver its enhanced performance are lightweight, oil-jet cooled, forged aluminum pistons with an anodised top ring land and a diamond-like coating on the pins to minimise friction. Its cylinder walls also get a plasma transfer wire arc coating in the cylinder bores for an ultra-thin, low-friction wear surface with 10 times the wear resistance compared to traditional cast-in-place or pressed-in cast iron cylinder liners.

The group states that we can expect the first vehicles powered by the Hurricane engine to reach U.S.A showrooms by 2022.