Located in the same industrial complex south of Vienna alongside Diamond Aircraft, Austro Engine is furiously gearing up to build new aerodiesel engines that will eventually replace Thielert's troubled Centurion line. At the Berlin Air Show this week, Austro displayed the AE 300, a 2-litre powerplant that's an evolutionary improvement over the same Mercedes-Benz engine Thielert used for its Centurions. Austro is working with MBTech, a Mercedes Benz daughter company, to develop the four-cylinder engine and certification is "imminent" according to a report in Flight Global's Flight Daily News this week. Like the Centurion, the AE 300 is a turbocharged, direct-injected diesel engine with high-pressure, common rail technology. But it has 165 HP rather than the Thielert's 135 HP. We're told that the engine has the same relative footprint and is being specifically designed to fit Diamond's DA40 Star and DA42 Twin Star.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/news/austro-engine-will-it-save-diamond