This kind of system has been around for a while now, but hasn’t been really succesful due to the fact it was never a good sale. Cylinder deactivation, or systems that disable a particular set of cylinders on an internal combustion engine has been tryied since 1980s for applications on cars, pioneered by General Motors, but the attempts failed, and the project has been abandoned.
However, over the next twenty years, these systems have been developed by Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz and stil General Motors, which appearently have proved that are able to work with the right technology. Thus, Audi is heared to introduce a program like this of their own.
The Ingosltadt brand says that in order to showcase their own version, Audi will install their first cylinder deactivation programs on the new versions of the S6, S7 and S8, and that they will debut next year, when they all will have a fresh V8 to go with.
Audi also said in the closing that the “cylinder on demand” system is permanently ready for use, even with the automatic transmission in the “S” mode and the dynamic setting of Audi drive select.
Fingers are to be crossed for the new merge between Audi and the cylinder deactivation system, hoping that this will be a new and exciting feature on their already awesome cars.
Source: EMGCarTech