3W Propulsion System Gets American Debut
Germany’s 3W International (Booth #567) is displaying a complete propulsion system for the first time at Xponential, along with its line of heavy fuel and petrol engines.
The company is seeing demand for engines with a high degree of flexibility and for solutions adaptable to the commercial market.
“We have the right drive in the portfolio for any civilian application — from two horsepower to 60 horsepower,” says 3W CEO Karsten Schudt. “Gas engines are particularly in demand for civilian applications. They're lighter and technically simpler in contract to HF [heavy fuel] engines. We can offer gas engines in different variants.”
The complete propulsion systems concept has so far only been introduced to 3W customers in Europe and Asia.
3W’s engines are available in a twin-spark version, where the engines come equipped with double spark plugs. This means the engine can run lower when idling, reducing the noise it makes. The gas engines can also come as a 3W Competition Series — a performance enhancement measure from the company.
In addition to complete drive units, the company is also moving into the hybrid engine space.
“Demand from companies working massively on hybrid solutions has increased during the past two years,” says Schudt. “So then we conducted the first very specific meetings at AUVSI 2015 in Atlanta. Naturally the weight-performance ratio plays an important role in such applications. Weight should be as small as possible with maximal performance. Fuel consumption has to be kept within bounds in this connection. Consequently, our gas engines from the Competition Series with electronic fuel injection are ideal here, since that way we can boost engine performance and reduce fuel consumption with fuel injection."
