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Today, SULEV legislation represents the most stringent emission standard for vehicles with combustion engines, and it will be introduced starting by Model Year 2003. In order to meet such standards, even higher effort is required for the development of the exhaust gas emission concept of SI engines. Beyond a facelift of the combustion system, exhaust gas aftertreatment, and the engine management system, new approaches are striven for. The principle keys are well known: low HC feed gas, high thermal load for quick light-off, exhaust system with low heat capacity and highly effective exhaust gas aftertreatment.

The new Thermo-Elasto-Hydro-Dynamic (TEHD) code developed by FEV, is designed to improve the predictability of journal bearing designs and thereby increase the reliability of safety factors in the development of highly loaded internal combustion engines. Advanced analysis tools are evaluated by their performance as well as by their ease of use. High performance means on the one hand: taking into account all the important characteristics, like bearing elasticity or cavitation effects, to mention only some major parameters for modern journal bearing analysis. On the other hand: an economic run-time behavior must be a key feature concerning usability of the TEHD-demands for daily development praxis. Ease of use means also, that the TEHD model can easily be used as a plug-in routine of an already existing software package that is well known to the development departments.

This paper focuses on start-up technology for fuel processing systems with special emphasis on gasoline fueled burners. Initially two different fuel processing systems, an autothermal reformer with preferential oxidation and a steam reformer with membrane, are introduced and their possible starting strategies are discussed. Energy consumption for preheating up to light-off temperature and the start-up time is estimated. Subsequently electrical preheating is compared with start-up burners and the different types of heat generation are rated with respect to the requirements on start-up systems. Preheating power for fuel cell propulsion systems necessarily reaches up to the magnitude of the electrical fuel cell power output. A gasoline fueled burner with thermal combustion has been build-up, which covers the required preheating power.

Local air pollution, noise emissions as well as global CO2 reduction and public pressure drive the need for zero emission transport solutions in urban areas. OEMs are currently developing battery electric vehicles with the focus to provide emission free urban transportation combined with lowest total cost of ownership and consequently a positive business case for the end customers. Thereby the main challenges are electric range, product cost, system weight, vehicle packaging and durability. Hence they are the main drivers in current developments. In this paper AVL describes two of its truck and bus solutions - a modular battery concept as well as a concept for an integrated electric axle. Based on the vehicle requirements concept designs for both systems are presented.

The safety of BEVs in driving, charging and parking condition is essential for the success of electrification in automotive industry as well as key driver of any future development of Li-Ion HV battery. AVL has developed a unique simulation approach in which the multi-physical behavior of the single cell in thermal runaway is modelled and applied to module, pack or vehicle level. In addition and beside this cell behavior, various more physical phenomena during thermal propagation on pack level are considered and predicted by the simulation method: component melting, ignition and flammibilty of venting gas and HV failures.

Electrification globally shows promise in reducing greenhouse and noxious emissions. Although there is immense potential in such technologies penetrating across vehicle segments in the Indian market, the key lies in offering scalable, cost effective battery solutions suiting the diverse product and customer needs. This paper describes the development and possible applications of a low voltage battery system that fulfills the current needs on the Indian market. Based on real-world driving profiles the energy and power output required for the target platform are determined. Keeping in mind the Indian operating conditions, safety requirements, driving behavior, charging infrastructure, operational costs, supplier network and serviceability, technical requirements for such systems are described. Also, benchmarking data of current battery systems help to optimize the mechanical, thermal, and electrical layouts.

Importance of electric and hybrid vehicles steeply increased in the last few years. Especially topics like CO2 reduction and local zero emissions are forcing companies to focus on electrification. While main technical problems seem to be solvable from a technical point of view, commercial and security topics are gaining more importance. For full electric vehicles the driving range is limited by the capacity of available batteries. As those batteries are one of the most heavy and expensive parts of these vehicles, reduction of battery size is a big topic in vehicle development. To increase a vehicle's driving range without increasing battery size some range extending backup system has to be available. Such a Range Extender should be a small system combining combustion engine and electric generator to produce the required electricity for charging the batteries whenever required.

Today, the battery development process for automotive applications is relatively decoupled from the vehicle integration and system validation phase. Battery pack design targets are often disregarded at very early development phases even though they are thoroughly linked to the vehicle-level requirements such as performance, lifetime and cost. Here, AVL proposes a methodology guided by virtual testing techniques to frontload vehicle-level validation tasks in the earlier phase of battery pack testing. This paper focuses on the benefits of the methodology for both battery suppliers and automotive OEMs. Applications will be explained, based on a modular virtual testing toolchain, which involves the simulation platform and models as well as the generation of model parameters and test cases.