AVL’s perspective on future powertrains for mobile agricultural and construction machinery

Zero emission technologies are arriving in the OFF-Road industry, driven by government regulations to reduce emissions and noise. Furthermore, future city bans will prohibit transit of vehicles with diesel engines in the central areas. These stricter legal requirements force the manufactures of mobile agricultural and construction machinery to develop vehicles with diesel alternative powertrains. This paper will discuss the potential of different powertrains using full battery electric, hybrid, fuel cell or hydrogen ICE technology. The technologies we be evaluated and compared in terms of integration ability, operation- and refilling time and TCO. There are considerable challenges in bringing alternative powertrains into typical off-road applications. Especially the huge number of different applications with specific requirements will lead to high diversity of powertrain architectures, which have to be managed by vehicle manufactures. The paper will describe these challenges and quantify the gaps and potential routes to solve them.