What’s a Wankel engine and why India’s advancing it’s indigenisation
Deep Tech Dispatch Issue #12 | A newsletter from India Tech Report
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The Lede
This headline I stumbled upon is courtesy G S Madhusudhan at Incore Semiconductors and IIT Madras. He’d posted it with a couple of pithy comments on LinkedIn on the significance of this development for India’s UAV ecosystem.
India is making significant strides in indigenisation of engines for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) by developing and certifying a variety of indigenous version. Collaborative efforts between government bodies such as CSIR-NAL and private companies such as Solar Defence and TridenTech have led to the made-in-India versions of Wankel rotary engines and high-power diesel systems.
The Indian-made power plants are being integrated into diverse platforms, including the TAPAS-BH-201 for long-range surveillance and the 150 kg class “Loitering Munition” for precision strikes. As India’s drone ecosystem takes off, it will also support applications in agriculture and disaster rescue operations.
The Wankel engine derives its name from the German engineer Felix Wankel who invented and developed it between the late 1920s and 1950s. And automakers like Mazda really took to it. Today the engine is seeing use in Indian UAVs.
This week’s episode in Conversations
If you missed the latest episode’s release on Tuesday, here’s a chat with Ramamurthy Sivakumar, co-founder and CEO at HrdWyr, a semiconductor startup in Bengaluru.
Custom silicon: Ramamurthy Sivakumar at HrdWyr on the opportunity to build from India for the world
And coming up
That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.