They call it an electric turbocharger

Many of the turbos today have variable geometry vanes or are paired with a small and large one to reduce lag. Maybe a small supercharger can provide initial boost and the turbo can take over at greater RPM's. The supercharger can be clutched so parasitic losses would be minimal once the turbo gets boosting.

BMW has been using a twin turbocharger (i.e., small and large exhaust driven turbos) to eliminate "throttle lag" for years. This appears to offer another solution to the problem.

My Jeep, with a single turbo suffers with a 2-3 second turbo lag. Makes if very exciting to pull out in front of a truck on the highway, btw.) My BMW X5 35d with that twin turbo setup has no noticeable turbo lag. I'm not sure about the technical and financial advantages of the BMW system vs. the electric turbo system, but it will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the marketplace.

Every step you put into a process certainly does cause inefficiencies but there are of lot of steps in turbocharging also. Just think of the exhaust restriction compared to a supercharger system.

I think the fact that most superchargers were located on top of the engine and caused clearance issue for designer. Caused the turbo to take a leap. That's not true anymore for even the Mechanical supercharger.

Trying to use a fan or hairdryer to get boost has been tried for years. The problem is the conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy and back to mechanical energy has losses that are greater than the gains. Yes, you can slowly charge up a large battery or capacitor bank so that you can quickly exhaust it on a boosted moment, but you will not gain efficiencies due to the conversion and storage losses.

This can only be a good thing. My route work Prius has no belts at all. Power steering, water pump, brake booster, air conditioning, fans and whatever else are all electric. No reason why an electric blower wouldn't by better than exhaust or belt driven that I can think of.

Could it be that it would allow the electric super charger to be mounted in many different places.

Last time I checked, TANSTAAFL, and that electric power for the supercharger, which is what it is, has to come from somewhere. So why not just use a regular supercharger activated with an electric clutch?

Or are we just going for the "Gee Whiz!!" factor? And besides, the benefits of the turbocharger was that you used exhaust gases to power the device. No drain on the engine power to produce a bit more power. If you're not racing, who gives two hoots about "turbo lag"?

It would be nice to have a switch so you could just turn it off while goofing around town. Or on a Sunday drive

I suppose it actually is a supercharger since it doesn't use exhaust gas to drive it. It's probably more efficient than either an engine driven supercharger or a turbocharger. It seems to follow the trend of using electric motors rather than power directly off the engine, like what is being done with power brakes, steering and electric water pumps.