By B.C. Kessner
QinetiQ North America Monday said it has redesigned the E-X-Drive electric drive transmission from the canceled 24-ton Future Combat Systems (FCS) ground vehicle program and scaled it to a 50-ton “ideal solution” for the Army’s new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV).
“We had about four years of development, and the U.S. government spent a lot of money on the original for the 24-ton,” John Mackey, QinetiQ’s technical manager for mounted systems, told Defense Daily on Monday at the AUSA annual symposium in Washington, D.C. “We didn’t want that to go to waste, so we kicked in money to develop additional models… [including] the 50-ton and we’re waiting to see what the Army comes back with for the GCV.”
The Army will be holding the first of two planned GCV industry days in Dearborn, Mich., on Oct. 16 (Defense Daily Oct. 5).
Mackey said the company adapted the innovative, modular, electric cross drive to prove it was scalable to meet the high-performance, lightweight, and efficient requirements for tracked vehicles of any size. E-X-Drive is now planned for production in the United States and would be ready to drive the GCV that is projected to be fielded within seven years as part of the Army’s modernization strategy, he added.
QinetiQ’s analysis for a highly agile 50-ton vehicle has shown that the E-X-Drive is only 24 percent heavier and 32 percent larger than the previous 24-ton FCS design.
Mackey said that it is less than 50 percent of the weight (including brakes) and 66 percent of the volume of a performance-comparable mechanical cross-drive transmission. “But the real savings are when you look at the drive as part of a system.”
Electric drives provide fuel savings of 10-20 percent over current vehicles, while affording higher dash speed and acceleration.
Lower propulsion subsystem weight and volume budgets also enable a higher level of vehicle protection, Mackey said. Other advantages include larger off-board and onboard power availability, lower cooling demands, greater reliability and simpler diagnostics. Additionally, E-X-Drive matches mechanical and electrical components to minimize electrical demand, he added.
E-X-Drive also has a lot of trade space options related to battery sizing for hybrid solutions. “This could be electric, diesel-electric…even fuel cells or combinations with engines,” Mackey said.
The company believes that electric drive systems can provide major advantages to a broad range of tracked military vehicles. QinetiQ is doing concept and design work with BAE Systems for an E-X-Drive variant to retrofit Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Mackey said.
“This system is easily scalable, modular and completely symmetrical and would offer a great, cost-effective improvement for a variety of platforms,” he added.