Electric Supercharger

[RawDarkness]

I hear some work great but some dont and will slow down the car past about 3 RPMs

Anybody ever use one or hear about it?

[fishexpo101]

Most are bogus - some are either a large electric fan (squirrel cage blower) or a marine bilge pump. Usually, if they are designed to run off the current charging system and fit inline with the intake - they are most likely useless for power generation. Some cases, I've read they either cripple the electrical system (too much of a load) or worse, break apart at speed and have the resulting broken bits get chewed up by the engine (inline ones mounted after the air filter).

There are some "real" electric superchargers. Most of those are based off a real belt driven superchargers (roots type or centrifugal S/C), but instead of being powered off the engine's crank - they are powered by a separate, powerful electric motor(s).

You can weed out which ones they are, since they generally are designed to be run off of several batteries wired together to give you the power to drive the S/C. Your alternator and battery pack, doesn't have enough reserve capacity/juice to drive a working S/C as well as supply the all the accessories/engine needs.

Depending on your model year - there are real solutions out there. TRD and GM performance make bolt-on superchargers for the earlier Matrix/Vibes 1ZZ-FE engines, later ones could be adapted with a throttlebody plate. For the 2ZZ-GE Matrix XRS/Vibe GT - there is a Greddy/Trial S/C that bolts on and works well with the already high compression already on the car with no physical modifications (also the same setup on the supercharged Lotus Exige/Elise cars - Toyota supplied 2ZZ-GE engines with Lotus EMS).

[Fruitbat]

In other words : don't get one, it's a waste of money, saps HP and kills your electrical system.