Chery working on Wankel engines for new energy vehicles
Chery's Wankel engine - back to power motors!
According to media reports Chery is planning to work on a series of Wankel engines for its next generation of new energy vehicles. The Wankel engine is based on a rotary system, rather than the up and down motion of pistons, to generate power for the drive shaft and ultimately the driving wheels. The company most famous for utilizing the Wankel engine is Mazda, who put the design into full use within the RX8 sports car, it appears that Chery are ready to take the Wankel engine to the new energy era.
Chery are hoping to use a miniature 800cc Wankel engine within a small car series that will deliver enough power to charge the batteries that will power an electric motor to deliver power to the wheels, similar in design to Chevrolet’s Volt model. Pictures of what appears to be a small displacement Wankel engine was leaked to the internet earlier today
According to information from various sources, the Wankel engines have already been fitted to pure electric QQ3′s and are able to travel a distance of 120-150km per trip, but wit h the addition of the Wankel engine the QQ’s are able to gain an extra 50-70km on Wankel powered electricity.
It’s not entirely clear if the Wankel based QQ3 or any other Wankel based new energy car will come out of Chery’s R&D lab for sale in the near future, but we hope that they will as it appears to be a rather unique way of dealing with range anxiety that many potential pure electric car owners are currently facing.
Tweet This
Share on Facebook
Digg This
Save to delicious
Stumble it
RSS Feed
The wankel works here as an range extender. But the mentioned “extended range” seems not worth the effort, other way around it makes sense, 50-70km on pure Battery juice and add 120-150km by the range extender.
Audi is developing the same system for their A1 Series at the moment, following their NSU heritage. NSU was one of the first, if not the first to use a wankel in a mass production car the RO80.
The Wankel seems to be perfectly suited for that – a very compact engine run on constant rpm’s, so to avoid some of its sealing problems as in the RX8, other Mazdas and NSU engines
From Chinese local press, it seems this Wankel engine is just a somking gun. The real weapon is a new type of engine designed by a Chinese engineer with some unique features similar to Wankel engines without any valve gearing but still emploies pistons. This new engine will solve the oil seal problem in Wankel engines. Actually it is kind of a modification to existing flat-four piston engine. It is called ??????, if you are interested, please check out the following link.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTY3ODE1NDUy.html
Sorry my mistake, the new engine still got valve gearings.
HK, that video was from 2004 so maybe nothing came from it.
It looked like they made a 2 stroke flat 2 with a balancing weight on the crankshaft.
Chery should make a QQ with the Wankel motor and not worry about the electric motor and battery. Now that would be fun…especially when someone ported it… brap brap brap brap brap.
Actually, Mazda was technically the first to have a running Wankel production vehicle with the Cosmo Sport, but allowed NSU to debut their Wankel Spider first at auto shows in 1964 as a courtesy due to them owning the Wankel concept. Essentially, an honor issue – as it owuld not have looked good for a licensee to come to market with a viable vehicle before the originators. The RO80 didn’t hit the market until 1967, the same year the Cosmo Sport technically hit the market, even though pre-production Cosmo Sport vehicles had been used and sold in several test markets for years already.