The strong and silent type: e-snowmobile with H2 fuel cell
The Austrian company Rotax has presented the Lynx HySnow, an emission-free snowmobile. It is based on the Lynx 69 Ranger Alpine snowmobile popular in Austria’s ski resorts. It has been completely converted and equipped with an electric drive system including hydrogen fuel cell for greater power and range.
The Rotax concept vehicle is the company’s first zero-emission snowmobile. The Austrian company has offices in Mexico and Hong Kong, specialises in watercraft, all-terrain and side-by-side vehicles, motorcycles and karts, as well as light and ultralight aircraft. Rotax explains that after considerable research and development they have developed an electric and fuel cell powertrain system that allows the vehicle to run with almost complete silence, unhampered by temperature fluctuations while achieving greater range and acceleration than conventional electric drives. The Lynx HySnow will, as one would suspect, be used in the winter tourism sector.
Rotax has also constructed an integrated hydrogen ecosystem and filling station in Hinterstoder that exclusively uses green hydrogen. Both the development of the Lynx HySnow fuel cell snowmobile and the filling station has been undertaken in a collaboration with hydrogen experts HyCentA Research and other project partners.
“We have invested over four and a half years of intensive research and development in this flagship project. The Lynx HySnow is a technological masterpiece and a key milestone for our sustainable powertrain systems. As an integral part of a real hydrogen ecosystem, the example of Hinterstoder also demonstrates how we and our partners are successfully driving forward the decarbonization of winter tourism,” says Nigel Foxhall, Director Advanced Engineering at BRP-Rotax. The project was undertaken in cooperation with the Climate and Energy Fund, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), HyCentA Research GmbH, Fronius Austria, the Graz University of Technology, the Hinterstoder and Wurzeralm ski area, ElringKlinger AG and ECuSol GmbH.
0 Comments