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RACING
Testing and simulating for the
next generation of motorsport
Whether Formula racing, rallying
or touring cars – motorsport
with fully or partially-electric drive
concepts is constantly becoming
more diverse, professional and competitive.
With each new generation
of race cars, the requirements placed
on battery technology and our testbed
trials and simulations grow.
503 – THE NUMBER FOR
HIGH-PERFORMANCE
At AVL, most testbed trials and
simulations for motorsport take
place on our multifunctional testbed
503. On this high-tech facility,
the entire race car can be operated
– no matter what kind of powertrain
it possesses. The interactions
between the car’s individual components
are identical to those when
used on the racetrack. The realism
is increased yet further by the fact
that the 503 is directly connected to
the AVL Driving Simulator. Nowadays,
modern race cars achieve huge
deceleration figures. It is a similar
story with acceleration: electric race
cars which immediately generate
full torque, place extreme demands
on the test environment. To be
able to cater for current and future
race categories, we have doubled
the performance of our motorsport
testbed from 400 kW per wheel to
800 kW.
The upgrade was tested using a
WRX car from the electric World
Rallycross Championship. Its
four-wheel drive powertrain has
three electric motors with a combined
performance of 600 kW, allowing
extreme acceleration (0 to
100 km/h in 1.8 seconds). To correctly
reproduce these values, including
the driveline oscillations,
the individual wheel dynos on the
503 can be very finely tuned. This
way, with the help of AVL VSM™
RACE software, we can create extremely
realistic test runs. Every