I fantasized years ago about using a camless engine for jake-brake like recycling of energy, my thought was to store compressed air in a series of tanks, say 3, with each tank given time to cool off in series, so that said air could be released for use as turbo-like boost, only it would be major deluxe turbo boost - the air would be cold from decompression and no parasitic energy draw was made on the system to gain that boost.
Imagine a tank compressed to 1000 psi. I'm sure there's a lot I don't know about turbo boost but I found this for use as a basis:
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Turbochargers allow an engine to burn more fuel and air by packing more into the existing cylinders. The typical boost provided by a turbocharger is 6 to 8 pounds per square inch (psi). Since normal atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi at sea level, you can see that you are getting about 50 percent more air into the engine. Therefore, you would expect to get 50 percent more power. It's not perfectly efficient, so you might get a 30- to 40-percent improvement instead.
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Turbochargers and Engines - Turbochargers and Engines | HowStuffWorks
I'd have to do some serious research to really get my head around this (I've tried, not sure my knowledge of thermodynamics is up to the task) but I know that decompressed air can get pretty cold. If it was decmpressed immediately after compressing, would probably be somewhat normal temp, as the compressed air would be pretty hot. Let the tank cool however and the decompressed air can easily be sub-freezing.
FTSOA, let's say that one could do controlled releases of air at 30 psi and 32 degrees F. My guess is that it would provide good power. I can only imagine that compressed air is not legal in drag racing, putting ice in an intercooler sort of a different category, the compression was obtained by the engine.
I found this article of an experiment on that score.
Compressed-Air Supercharging - Hot Rod Network
Don't know if it's legal or not - but that's beside the point. Camless engine produced compressed air is derived from on board fuel, it's not a stored sort of energy that will run out soon enough. And the fact of it being gained from braking, saving wear and tear on discs and pads is very attractive.
It might be possible to use a 2.0 liter, beefed up to handle high boost, to do the work of larger engines. One could use the frost boost for accelerating and normal aspiration for cruising. Add to that other efficiencies from ideal valve timing and potential mpg figures could be very good.