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Customers are demanding propulsion systems giving as much as possible riding pleasure while still considering strict environmental regulations. BRP-Powertrain developed an engine for their snowmobile brand Ski-Doo fulfilling both needs. The Inline two cylinder four stroke engine using a multi port fuel injection system significantly contributes to an impressive and up to now second-to-none cruising range of 29 miles per gallon. With 42 kW at 7250 1/min the performance target was achieved. Excellent combustion stability allows Lambda values of 1.1 and higher in part load. This also contributes to the good fuel efficiency. The geometrical layout of the engine was driven by vehicle boundaries. All the power pack components had to be installed using a minimum of space. A low center of gravity was an absolute need for stable riding properties of the snowmobile. Therefore the crankshaft was put as low as possible which left no room for an oil pan underneath the engine.

The demand for improved fuel economy and the request for Zero Emission within cities require complex powertrains with an increasing level of electrification already in a short-termed timeframe until 2025. According to general expectations the demand for Mild-Hybrid powertrains will increase significantly within a broad range of implementation through all vehicle classes as well as on electric vehicles with integrated Range Extender (RE) mainly for use in urban areas. Whereas Mild Hybrid Vehicles basically use downsized combustion engines at current technology level, vehicles with a high level of powertrain electrification allow significantly different internal combustion engine (ICE) concepts. At AVL, various engine concepts have been investigated and evaluated with respect to the key criteria for a Range Extender application. A Wankel rotary engine concept as well as an inline 2 cylinder gasoline engine turned out to be most promising.

Due to the restricted capacity of today's battery systems and therefore limited operating range of electric vehicles (EV), several solutions for recharging the energy storage during driving already have been published and still are the subject of extensive development programs. One example is the Range Extender (RE), which is a combination of an internal combustion engine (ICE) with a generator unit, which serves the purpose of a power back-up in case of a battery with low state of charge (SOC), without any direct connection to the drivetrain. For this kind of RE-application, different boundary conditions are very important. Especially in EVs topics like packaging space and NVH behavior play a main role. To fulfill these important characteristics, AVL has developed a Wankel-RE unit in which the generator is driven directly from the eccentric shaft of the rotary-piston ICE.

The automotive trend towards increased levels of electrification is showing a clear direction for hybrid technologies. Nowadays Mild- and plug-in-hybrids open a very wide area of future developments whereas battery electric vehicles (BEV) are still evident but still perceived as niche products with limited production volumes. Nevertheless, major OEMs are working on these kinds of vehicles and have also brought such EV concepts into series production. All of these designs show a clear trend that, beside the topic of electric traction motor and energy storage systems, the internal combustion engine (ICE) is also coming into focus again. In many of these vehicles the range extender (RE) unit is foreseen as an emergency unit to recharge the batteries if the state of charge (SOC) is too low. One of the major advantages of a BEV over other designs is the very good acoustic behavior, so the NVH performance becomes the most challenging topic for RE development.