From a social and environmental perspective, we need zero-emission vehicles as soon as possible. But industry faces the same challenges as private persons do. You know it’s harmful and expensive. You will quit for sure – one day. It’s only that BAD HABITS DIE HARD!

The latest Volkswagen Diesel affair brings the topic strongly to the customer’s mind. Some car engineers are rather surprised what a big scandal this has become – we weren’t surprised to hear that emissions are far higher during real road driving than on the very abstract and specific test cycles. And all you had to do is to pass one test with a brand new car.

All car manufacturers face a huge challenge to change their production to more environmental friendly products, but the customer is not willing to pay for increased technical efforts and research in alternatives. Since car firms are competitors on the market and operate mainly profit and growth oriented, external pressure has to be build up from governments and the customers. What’s currently missing to lead us to a green mobility future is a global cooperative approach.

People resist being changed and so does industry. However, we do not resist change if it’s our own choice. I hope the latest affairs and positive signals have changed the thinking and long-term strategy of industry leaders, so that they actually want to move towards green vehicles, by now. So far, politics has tried to force industry with pressure and regulations – but industry has resisted being changed, of course. It’s like if I wanted to quit smoking now. That’s the current stage in most countries in November 2015.

Experience shows that it is not enough if I rationally want to quit. Now, I find my old habits are deeply rooted in the sub-conscious mind. I start a fight against my habits. But habits will win. I stay in the phase of wanting to quit smoking – next year. Nothing has changed, except of that I feel bad every time I light a cigarette, from now on.

I’ve smoked cigarettes for many, many years. I haven’t even tried another brand. I drink a lot of coffee. And every time I drink coffee I need to have a cigarette. You see it’s not that cigarettes make me happy but it certainly makes me unhappy if I can’t have a cigarette with my coffee, at the moment. Now, let’s take the cigarettes for emissions. And the coffee is the car. Will I stop smoking when I don’t drink coffee, anymore? Certainly not!

Will I stop drinking coffee, once I’m done with the bad habit of smoking? Not much likely. So, I will still want to drive a car and there are good reasons for doing that. A car may not make you a happy person but it increases your productivity because it allows you to travel, easily. It makes fun (tastes good) and so we may not even need cars but will continue to drive them. Well, we would produce a whole lot of emissions even without cars! But yes, cars should be without emissions. So, we currently want to keep cars that are fun to drive but we want to quit smoking. Let’s drink coffee (or drive) without smoking, from now on.

To quit smoking it is necessary to make a definite decision in the rational mind and then gradually change the sub-conscious … and simply push through until our old habits have been replaced by new habits. In this picture the sub-conscious is the old grown company structure that creates smoking vehicles that sell well. From that perspective it is not enough if the CEOs themselves rationally decide to build zero-emission cars. The whole company structure may need to be changed, because the bad habits are deeply rooted in the system.

It is not enough to have one coffee a day without smoking. We already do that from time to time. There are good environmentally friendly cars available, but they don’t reach the mass market in recognizable numbers and don’t lead to profits. It’s like not smoking after lunch but all other times during the day. Seems like a part of my personality wants to quit smoking, but the old multitude of habits sub-consciously leads me to go along as always – without any change. Over the last decades we’ve always tried to smoke a bit less. And we’ve found that doesn’t work. Let’s think about better strategies.

In order to quit smoking I also have to change my self-image. Firstly I have to imagine myself being an absolute non-smoker. In fact, car manufacturer try to change their self-image. E.g. BMW was mainly known for a sporty ride and sheer driving pleasure before they established more a life-style image with the Mini brand. Now, the electric vehicle i3 and hybrid car i8 should shift the company’s public image towards innovation and green mobility.

Next we have to gradually form the habit of not smoking. Or I replace smoking with another habit. Maybe I should try one of these E-cigarettes to help me get rid of my bad harmful self-destructive habit? They are not cheaper but they are supposed to be far less harmful.

Electric Vehicles

Electric Vehicles (EV) are great! IF they are pretty AND fun to drive. Let’s take the Tesla Model S as an example. Nice car. Current drawbacks are:

• Too expensive
• Small driving range
• Battery capacity will decrease over lifetime and batteries are expensive to replace
• Not enough charging stations
• Charging up the batteries takes too long

We often talk about the driving range but please note the last two points are more crucial for the customer. E.g. motorbikes also don’t have huge driving ranges. But IF the price didn’t matter I’d still want to drive long distances with the same car. That is very relevant! Otherwise I buy an expensive electric vehicle and need an additional normal vehicle. In this case, my overall costs and efforts for my (two) vehicles are definitely too high. Alternatively, I could drive a cheap normal car for long trips and rent EVs from car-sharing companies for city traffic – that makes more sense from an economical point of view.

So, we need more charging stations, that’s something local governments should push. The manufacturers can’t solve this issue on their own. Yet still, if charging up takes 30 minutes this does make Electric Cars inconvenient for long trips. Furthermore, if I can exclusively charge up batteries at the few charging stations, I’d get really nervous when driving the car, we call that range anxiety. Will the battery last until I get there? Will the charging station be open and available? Someone else could currently charge up and I don’t have the TIME to wait. Time is the most valuable good in the world, since we all have limited amount of time. Money we can earn, again. So, we need improvements in battery and charging technology, to avoid range anxiety, soon.

By the way, why does the driver have to charge up his batteries? We could simply replace them at a quick stop-by at the former gas stations. IF a global standard format for battery-packs existed. We needed global cooperation on such solutions to create standards and build up the necessary infrastructure.

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Electric Vehicles with Range Extenders

Wouldn’t it be good to have an additional combustion engine in the Electric Vehicle? YES – very good idea! Most of the time I use the EV to drive to work and back home and I’d charge my batteries there. An EV with an additional small combustion engine as range extender is a zero-emission vehicle, most of the time. The other times fuel is burnt to charge batteries and drive the electric motors. Or fuel is burnt to make it warm and cozy in the car.

Absolutely zero-emissions are particularly relevant in the overcrowded urban areas where many people live and smog issues arise. However, if I want to visit my aunt 800km away, twice a year, I could still USE the EV for that. I can charge up batteries by burning normal or alternative fuels whenever needed. The car produces some emissions, then – but that can almost be neglected in my average yearly driving profile. I don’t have to wait. I don’t have to be afraid of getting stuck with empty batteries, any more! And I don’t need another car for long distances. Wow! Now that really saves money and worries. No range anxiety, any more.

Electric vehicles that use range extenders solve current EV’s drawback of a limited drive range. The car mainly runs on batteries but you can also use it for longer trips. However, using the range extender for a long time is not efficient and the car’s speed and performance are reduced, then. You burn fuel with better fuel economy than normal cars. But then you have to charge the battery with that energy and loose efficiency, again. Therefore, it would be great if also the range extender runs zero-emission, e.g. if hydrogen is in the tank.

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Fuel Cell Vehicles

Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles burn hydrogen fuel and thereby create electric energy to drive the electric power train. In the long run, it is expected that Fuel Cell Vehicles will reach significant market share.

FCV will reach significant market share in the long run, because many governments and companies support the technology. California, Germany and Japan have ambitions funding programs to quickly build up the hydrogen fueling infrastructure in metropolitan areas. Meanwhile technical hurdles for hydrogen tank systems have been solved and standards for fueling stations have been defined.

The main obstacles for introducing this technology to the mass market is the current lack of hydrogen fueling infrastructure, high costs of the vehicles and higher fueling costs. Manufacturing costs for fuel cell units are currently much higher than for combustion engines, because platinum coating is needed to produce fuel cells. The technology is new and fuel cells are yet to prove reliability under harsh conditions.

Electric vehicles are only zero-emission, if electricity was created from environmental friendly sources. That’s currently not the case and there is a lack of charging infrastructure. To build up an electricity network from green renewable energy is a huge challenge. Solar or wind energy only produce during the day or when wind blows, so the energy needs to be stored somehow or directly delivered to wherever needed. It’s reasonable to locally produce hydrogen from renewable energy and use it to fuel cars.

Hydrogen can be used for fuel cell vehicles to generate electricity that drives electric motors. Alternatively hydrogen or other alternative fuels can be burnt in a combustion engine to move the car. We need a combination of all technologies to get zero-emission vehicles quickly, all over the world.

Wider Picture for Zero-Emission Transportation

So far, we’ve discussed EVs from the customer’s perspective. Let’s get back to the picture of emissions and cigarettes. You see TESLA is a native nonsmoker, the company never stopped smoking – it hasn’t had the bad habit from the beginning. The entire company has been formed to build electric cars, exclusively. Good point – isn’t it. It is much easier not to start smoking than to quit.

Let’s take into account the wider field of automotive industry. It’s not only car manufacturers. There are also suppliers, car shops, car rental and leasing businesses, fuel stations, politics and customers involved. Would we have zero-emission transportation if we all drove Electric Vehicles? Only if we produced energy form environmental friendly sources, exclusively. We don’t do that, yet. The smoker is the entire Automotive Society. We can’t simply kill all smokers or forbid smoking because there are far too many of them and they highly contribute to economy. We need to help the smokers to get rid of their bad habit.

Compared to an Electric Vehicle manufacturer, traditional car companies have quite different company and development structures. There is a powertrain department for engine, gearbox and drive train; a suspension dept., car body, design, electric and electronics, car testing and simulation. And each department acts mostly sovereign and has only few links to other departments. One car body is designed to carry many different engines and transmission. Suspension layout and application are different for normal driver, sport versions, country specific changes or SUV. The same engines are used in all cars and 80% of the parts equal for many different cars of all brands within a big group like Volkswagen.

What challenges traditional car makers, is that if you build EV’s all departments have to work much closer together, you need more communication and collaboration because the new EV concept highly affects all of the departments. You build a brand new car from scratch. That is usually rarely done because the development and testing is expensive. Traditionally, cars are continuously further developed over decades. A new car body every 5 years and the engine may have changed in between. New design elements and changes in the interior every now and then. Such evolutionary development process follows different rules and needs to be changed to build electric vehicles or effective hybrid cars, efficiently.

There are also car repair workshops and suppliers who earn their money with regular maintenance. Their high-profit businesses are oil-changes and replacing wear parts like clutches and brake pads or broken exhaust systems. Such workshops aren’t very happy with EVs since there’s less maintenance needed and there’s a great threat of losing main parts of their business. Such companies are part of the deeply rooted sub-conscious mind of the automotive society. Of course, you’ll experience resistance if you try to change things by simply making new regulations. It may not be visible where this resistance comes from but lobbyism does a good job, all over the world.

The customers are also involved, of course. You know what’s the best thing about sports cars? The looks (highly subjective) and the sound! Manufacturers spend high efforts into creating cars that look good and sound good. I use sports cars as example because that’s nothing you really need but the customer wants it. What he WANTS creates the DEMAND and not the actual social needs for transportation. Bear in mind that the customer doesn’t like being changed. Of course he’d love to drive a zero-emission car BUT it should look like, sound like and drive like the old car! To sum up, customers, politics and different sort of companies are part of the underlying sub-conscious resistance against giving up the bad habit of smoking. We should find a mild, gradual way to convince them to be willing to change a bit.

Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) use a combination of electric engines for slow city traffic and short trips plus combustion engines for long trips. It’s more efficient to burn liquid fuel on long trips, because it offers a higher energy density than current batteries. In a plug-in Hybrid Electric vehicle the batteries can be charged and the car is able to run entirely on electricity for short trips. For longer trips or fast acceleration fuel is burnt in a normal conventional combustion engine. There are many different forms of Hybrids. Without going into details there are combinations of:

– Big electric motors, many heavy batteries, small combustion engine (Range Extended Electric Vehicle)

– Small electric motors, fewer batteries, big combustion engine (Hybrid Electric Vehicle)

The best solutions for zero-emission vehicles in the near future are Hybrid Electric Vehicles that use alternative fuels for its combustion engine. That’s where the Rotary Engines come in.

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Rotary Engines

Everywhere I go I meet people who have a definite negative opinion about Wankel rotary engines. I found few of them have ever driven one. And if they’ve driven one or even owned one, then it was mostly either very old or quite cheap and suffered from bad maintenance. Bad maintenance is a common issue because there are only a few experts or enthusiasts available. I not only talk about the average customers on the street now. I mean car mechanics and engineers, vehicle dynamics and hybrid vehicle experts, race drivers, engine experts, politicians, professors, consultants and CEOs of automotive companies.

Main advantages of Rotary Engines are the higher power output from a smaller and lighter engine. That’s good for PACKAGE, meaning the engine fits into the car easily. The WEIGHT of the engine is smaller and the overall weight of the car can be reduced. Furthermore, RE are beneficial for Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH); they have less vibrations and create less noise. This means that a small engine with one rotor is enough whereas you need 3cylinders to have the same low level of noise and vibrations. RE have fewer parts. That’s cheaper, smaller, simpler and most likely more reliable. An even more relevant benefit is that rotary engines can be designed to be a multi-fuel engine, easily; so that the same engine runs with different sorts of fuels.

On the downside they are a bit less efficient when normal gas is used. To be more specific RE cars are less efficient under light-loading conditions. This means it’s not efficient to drive a 250hp engine in daily city traffic where only 10% of the maximum power output is used. For use as range extender that drawback is less relevant. Package, weight and NVH become more important in hybrid vehicles or small vehicles like motorbikes. So, there are still good reasons to use and further develop Rotary Engine technology.

Current and past Rotary Engine Vehicles needed more fuel than normal piston combustion engines. However, part of that drawback is not really due to the engine concept but because:

• The only existing RE cars are sport cars with other priorities
• Modern technology like direct injection and downsizing with high turbo-charging are not used in these cars
• There is far less effort and budget for further developments, as it was an absolute niche product over the last 30 years. Only one model of one company uses RE
• RE engines produce more heat at the exhaust system. Current catalytic converters are prone to failure under such conditions. To compensate that issue the RE itself does not run at its most economical air-fuel ratio; the engine runs way too rich under full throttle to keep exhaust temperatures low and that negatively affects fuel consumption.
• The application is not made for fast driving on the German Autobahn. For 60miles per hour the fuel consumption is tolerable (for a sports car).
• There are only very view experts on RE cars. It’s hard to find experienced engineers and mechanics or reuse experiences from past projects.

The drawback of some alternative fuels are that the overall power output of the engine is relevantly reduced, e.g. if you use hydrogen. Then the package and power-to-weight ratio becomes even more important. RE tend to be far more efficient than normal piston engines when hydrogen is used as fuel AND they are multi-fuel engines that could run with many sorts of fuel AND you can easily get enough power out of a small and light engine with alternative fuel.

Rotary Engine as Range Extender

Rotary Engines (RE) are ideal for use as range-extenders for charging up the batteries in electric vehicles. In contrast to a normal main combustion engine, a range extender runs almost entirely on full load and at constant revolution at its best operating range and is therefore far more efficient.

Mazda has presented a compact electric car that uses a RE range extender. Audi has presented the A1 e-tron as Electric Vehicle with a Rotary Engine Range Extender. The development has mainly been done at AVL List GmbH. Unfortunately the RE (and the whole car) has not made it into serial production.

Audi A1 etron Range Extended Electric Vehicle

Audi presented a Range Extended Electric Vehicle Audi A1 etron at Geneva Auto Show. The car uses a Rotary Engine to charge up batteries by burning fuel. A range extender also has additional benefits, e.g. it is used as heating. However, the planned serial production has been postponed several times and then was stopped. The author’s current subjective interpretation is that:

• The development of RE was not in accordance to Volkswagen’s overall group strategy. Although there are supporters at Audi, a niche solution only for this brand was considered to be less profitable than other conservative technologies that are already used within other Volkswagen brands. At that time Ferdinand Piëch was the chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen Group until 25 April 2015 and he was said to be skeptical about rotary engine technology, in general.
• From the technical perspective rumors are that the engine had issues with carbon build up during the long-time testing on the engine test rig. Carbon build ups result if the lubrication oil is not burned effectively.

Although the issue is known among RE enthusiasts this seems a solvable hurdle. Among modern RE vehicle drivers (Mazda RX7 and RX8) there is a saying ‘A redline a day keeps the carbon away’. That indicates the issue is strongly linked to the driving profile; engines which are mainly used under light-loading conditions with many short distance trips are far more affected. For RE as range extender a different programming of the ECU could solve the issue. Also carbon build up is known to be highly dependent on the exact brand and sort of engine oil for lubrication where low sulfite is needed. Mazda has strict recommendations for specific oil since most of modern fully synthetic oils are known to be harmful in that respective. Maybe there wasn’t enough willingness, time or money to solve the issue.

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Hybrid Vehicles and Alternative Fuels

The second field of application for Rotary Engines in modern vehicles is as main combustion engine in a hybrid car where alternative fuels are used to fulfill environmental needs. RE can be designed as multi-fuel engines which makes the technology attractive for military applications. Petrol gasoline, hydrogen, ethanol (alcohol), natural gas, diesel or synthetic fuels could be used. A hydrogen-fueled RE could be switched between petrol and hydrogen.

California and Germany are currently pushing the hydrogen infrastructure (zero-emission). Rotary Engines (RE) burn hydrogen far more efficiently than normal engines, because the combustion phase is longer and there is less danger of engine knocking. Hydrogen-fueled hybrid cars are a very easy and fast step towards zero-emission transportation. Politics, environmental rules and funding opportunities are currently very beneficial for RE.

Currently most hydrogen is made out of natural gas. Of course we could directly burn natural gas. Brazil may preferably use ethanol for a while. RE that run on renewable energy could help a lot to reduce CO2 and harmful emissions all over the world – to eventually become smoke-free for good.

Positive Signs of Collaboration

Toyota is by far the leading manufacturer of hybrid cars. On the SAE congress in April 2015 the company presented its new Fuel Cell Vehicle Mirai. More importantly, the company announced to release its patents on fuel cell cars in an attempt to further push the hydrogen fueling infrastructure! We appreciate that a lot as a great signs and signal for collaboration! Since the cooperation between Toyota and BMW a few years ago, the Bavarian manufacturer gained control over crucial key technology for carbon fiber and proved expertise in HEVs with BMW i8 and i3. The i3 is a purely EV but optionally uses a normal piston engine as range extender.

The combustion engine in the HEV i8 is a newly developed turbo-charged 1.5l 3 cylinder piston gasoline engine that delivers 220hp. Development of a entirely new engine was needed because none of the existing would fit for this plug-in HEV. I would like to mention that the standard 1.3l naturally aspirated Rotary Engine of Mazda RX8 delivers 190-230hp and probably fits into the car, easily. Turbocharged RE engines deliver far more power, or could be much smaller. It would be easier and cheaper to use a RE in such cars. BMW already has huge know-how and capabilities in running piston engines with hydrogen since extensive research in mid 1980s. It currently looks like the company now promotes fuel cell vehicles.

Toyota has recently announced to cooperate on key engine technology with Mazda. Mazda’s skyactive engines use an extraordinary high compression ratio of 14:1 and direct injection. Similarly, a higher compression ratio, forced induction and direct injection can significantly improve rotary engine efficiency. Toyota leads the field for hybrid vehicle technology and Fuel Cell Vehicles. Huge challenges for FCV were hydrogen tanks and hydrogen fueling stations. This seems to be solved by now. Mazda is the only manufacturer with recent experience and know-how for RE. In October 2015 Mazda presented its Mazda RX-Vision concept at Tokio Motor show. They unexpectedly announced to build a new gasoline rotary engine. Mazda has already had hydrogen-fueled RE HEV prototypes on the road for several years. So, this will most likely become a very fruitful cooperation between Mazda (RE and skyactive) and Toyota (HEV and FCV) that hopefully leads to affordable green driving pleasure!

Tesla is a California company that builds the best electric vehicles. Moller International in Davis, CA develops flying cars. For that purpose RE are uniquely appropriate due to light weight with high power and high reliability. Moller had invested over $120mio into RE research to relevantly increase efficiency as their traditional drawback. The sub-company Freedom Motors means to provide hundreds of thousands RE for small motorcycles, soon. Very recently Tesla announced to investment into Moller Int. Tesla could easily multiply their market share when their EVs will be offered with Rotapower engines as range extender.

Currently, patent protection rather hinders than ensures technical progress, because only big companies can afford legal departments to enforce their rights. Inventors and start-ups struggle to finance international patent submission and the time-consuming process slows down their efforts. There is much public money spent, spread all over local funding schemes, that isn’t focused onto specific tasks. It would be better to create a neutral organization to unite research, development and education for a specific technology. A co-operative company to form a global institute for zero-emission vehicles, where all members benefit from shared know-how, facilities and research output.

Let’s start with a global institute for rotary engine vehicles and renewable energy. To reach that goal, we work on increasing the awareness for technical alternatives in general, where Rotary Engines are an example for the great variety of technical solutions and unreleased potential for innovation. Because experienced engineers and experts for rotary engine vehicles are very rare, we started to educate students and professionals onto the topic and work on crucial key-technology that improves rotary engines.

 

Outlook

I expect fuel cell vehicles to gain significant market share in the long run, when the hydrogen fueling infrastructure has been continuously improved. However, if you drive a fuel cell you’d have to entirely rely on the hydrogen fueling stations – range anxiety. If that is not available the customer is stuck again, similar to current electric vehicles.

In contrast, with hydrogen-fueled rotary engines you were free to use normal gas or other fuels, alternatively. So this seems to be the best concept for a fast increase of zero-emission vehicles on the road. The car repair workshops and suppliers don’t have to change much. Traditional car manufacturers only need to use a different tank and rotary engines instead of piston engines. Please note that this is a small change compared to building and maintaining Fuel Cell Vehicles or Electric Vehicles.

The customer might not even feel any difference. The car still drives and sounds like he expects. Therefore, Rotary Engines that use Renewable Energy are by far the cheapest, easiest and fastest way to push zero-emission vehicles, in the near future. In contrast to Electric Vehicles this approach is more convenient from an economical and social global point of view and for the traditionally grown industry. The entire Automotive Society has to change less in order to reach our common goal of zero-emission vehicles that look pretty and are fun to drive.

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