A turbocharger, or turbo, is a gas compressor. It is used to force air into an internal combustion engine. A turbocharger is a form of forced induction. It increases the amount of air entering the engine to create more power. A turbocharger has the compressor powered by a turbine. The turbine is driven by the exhaust gas from the engine. It does not use a direct mechanical drive. This helps to improve the performance of the turbocharger. Early builders of turbochargers called them as "turbosuperchargers". A supercharger is an air compressor used for forcing air into an engine. They thought that by adding a turbine to turn the supercharger, it would yield a "turbosupercharger". The term was soon shortened to "turbocharger". This can now create some confusion. The term "turbosupercharged" is sometimes used to refer to an engine that uses both a crankshaft-driven supercharger and an exhaust-driven turbocharger. This is also called twincharging.

Turbocharger spare parts include cartridges (fully assembled and balanced turbocharger cores); vacuum actuators and pneumatic actuators; electronic actuators (electric servo drives); turbocharger repair kits (spare part kits/sets for quick minor repair); shaft and wheels (turbocharger shafts with turbine wheel, turbine rotors); compressor wheels (turbocharger compressor wheels); VNT nozzle rings (rings with nozzles for VNT turbochargers, VNT geometry control nodes); nozzle ring housings (housings for VNT geometry control elements); bearing housings (cartridge housings, turbo core housings) and so on.