Do You Know How Fast Car Engines Consume Air?

Manufacturers use phrases like "At top speed, the cooling system circulates 211 gallons of coolant through the engine every minute," or, "The Chiron consumes 15,850 gallons of oxygen per minute at wide open throttle." Even this is quite difficult to understand without a visualisation.

Thanks to YouTube and channels like Engineering Explained who help us understand how engine consumes air through visualisation.

The host Jason Fenske brought his Honda S2000 and two big balloons to help us learn and understand just how much air an engine burns through. Naturally, the measure of this experiment is much smaller than what would result if Fenske were to get hold of a force-induced 8.0-litre Bugatti Chiron.

A naturally aspirated 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine still consumes more than sufficient air to fill a pair of balloons and help us gain perspective. With the aid of simple math calculation, Fenske finds out that his Honda S2000 would consume 9,000 litres of air per minute if the Honda's engine is powered to its 9,000rpm limit.

Fenske obtained this by taking the motor size, 2.0-litres, multiplying it by 9,000 for the number of RPMs, and dividing by two to estimate for the fact that it takes two crankshaft revolutions for each cylinder to fire.

At this pace, the S2000 would consume air in Fenske's two car garage in 12 minutes. When compared to the Bugatti Chiron, it would only take 1.8 minutes to feed the same amount of air with its motor at the limit.

Here is the video of Fenske of Engineering Explained describing how engines consume air. Click to view.

The Bugatti Chiron is among the best luxury sports cars, but much before the Chiron was introduced, the Veyron Super Sport versionis recognised by Guinness World Records as the fastest street-legal production car in the world, with a top speed of 431.072 km/h. Below is an extensive photo gallery of the Veyron Super Sport, click to view.