For an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (E-REV), the misfire failure of the range extender can result in working condition deterioration, mileage decrease, vibration and noise increase, and other adverse consequences. The relationship of the shaft instantaneous angular speed (IAS) signal and the misfire fault of the range extender was studied by harmonic analysis. Based on the theory of shafting torsional vibration, the range extender dynamics model was developed to analyze the changing trend of the shaft IAS theoretically. Then, the shaft IAS signal under different working conditions was simulated using a developed range extender rigid-flexible hybrid multi-body dynamics model. It is found that the 0.5-order harmonic phase and the amplitude of range extender IAS can be used as the characteristic parameters in misfire fault diagnosis, which has been verified by experiments on an engine bench.