Anybody know a good place to buy cheap motors at various sizes? Like servos and stuff?
300-400kW continuously should be the headline. Thats impressive. Lots of motors can try and make 1000hp if you feed them enough voltage but only for a split second before they overheat and burn out. I wonder how long it can do this 1000HP.
The previous version is already in the Temerario. This is more of an evolution of an existing design.
We StRaPpEd MaGnEtS tO rEcLaIm EnErGy!!!w
Until someone tests it independently, this should be considered BS.
28 pounds = 12.7kg, for those wondering.
But, how much is that in baby elephants?
Roughly a tenth of a baby elephant, or around two round trips of your neurons on a single line reaching the moon
Bro got that galaxy brain. Average is about 1.4 kgs, or roughly .5% of a giraffe for you standard pedants.
The size is less of an issue than the power usage.
Does it also use 1000% more power to get that strength?
The only real benefit in that case would be robot mech suits.
Weight will help with efficiency. If you got to tow around less weight, you can go for longer.
The weight of the motor is insignificant compared to that of the batteries.
True
I’m assuming the efficiency is similar to other electric motors. Maybe not the best, but likely acceptable. If it’s not, the product is DOA.
If my assumption holds true, it would allow for lighter cars and better packaging by making even more room for the battery near the bottom of the car since these engines are so small, you could easily just use one per driven wheel and forget about differentials and such. And hybrids that put the motor in a ZF 8HP transmission could have wayyyyy more power available from the electric bit, as space is sorta constrained there.
I think trains could also benefit from a weight loss IF these are durable enough. They have multiple motors usually.
Weight is important in vehicles not just because of energy efficiency, but because the more sprung mass you have, the more work the suspension needs to do. And unsprung mass is even worse, so ideally your motors are sprung mass. Currently weight is still a bit of an issue for EVs due to the batteries, but if they can make up for it a bit by having super light weight motors, the difference between EV weight and ICE weight becomes smaller. Weight is also super important to road wear, I think it is by 4th power. So 20% heavier means twice as much wear already.
cant wait for corporations to crush the competition with some bullshit yet again and then complain that we’re at peak EV tech anyway
Everything but metric.
They’re based in the UK, they have no excuse.
So when are we going to see these in trains?
Trains don’t benefit much from lesser weight.
Drones, and planes are the most likely to benefit from this.
Quite the opposite, you want the locomotive to be as heavy as possible without exceeding axle or track load limits. The heavier it is, the more weight it can pull before slipping the wheels.
Assuming that flying with an electric motor is a viable option (I have zero clue, but from what I heard currently its not that realistic that we will get electric planes)
Small electric planes already exist. But yeah not passenger planes or to go any useful distance for the foreseeable future
The main weight in an electric plane is a battery, and the energy density in that isn’t good enough yet, and it’s possible that it can’t be better with the current batteries we have, and we need a battery on a different set of elements
This looks small enough to be installed within the wheel hub itself. Imagine a car with four motors, one inside each wheel. The entire floor pan could just be one thin battery, and everything above it could be passenger and storage space.
PS
One issue I hadn’t thought of is putting traditional brakes (which generate a ton of heat) right next to the motors. Again, we’re just asking for mechanical issues here, and we’re ballooning unsprung mass to mitigate it, especially in heavier cars that take a lot to stop.
The entire floor pan could just be one thin battery, and everything above it could be passenger and storage space.
This seems like a minor thing, but the control electronics for the motors takes up a nontrivial amount of space. So do “traditional” subsystems like hydraulics, climate control, or an old fashioned car battery (which often exists in parallel to the EV drivetrain).
Theres also safety to consider. A traditional sedan “hood,” even a small one, is easier on standing pedestrians, so it hits their legs and they flop on top, instead of slamming them like a wall (as a bus-like front would).
That’s how EVs started! Sorta.
This is from a Porsche in 1900:
And some 2000s EVs tried it. But it’s impractical.
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It increases unsprung weight, e.g. weight not cushioned by suspension. Bad for ride/handling/steering feel.
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All that vibration is HARD on the motor. Read: unreliable.
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Motor is more exposed to temperature/dust. Again, reliability.
In reality, a decent suspension needs a lot of room under the body anyway. An axle to get the motor in the body is dirt cheap on the rear, and still pretty cheap on the front, and you could just mount this thing sideways to make it flat…
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That would be a lot of unsprung weight.
Handling and ride quality are dramatically and negatively impacted by every bit of weight that is not held up by the suspension. That’s why higher performance cars will have lightweight wheels. Rather than steel wheels you see on lower performance cars.
It’s better to just put all the heavy drive components inboard on the chassis and run drive shafts to the wheels.
You see motors in the hubs of bicycles, because they really don’t go that fast. So even if the bike has a suspension, it’s not that big of a deal. Motorcycles on the other hand would need to keep any heavy parts inboard.
Steel wheels haven’t been common on anything but really cheap cars for a few decades now, but in general your point holds true. There’s heavier and lighter alloy wheels out there.
Still, these could be just tiny motors connected to the wheels via a short shaft on the rear especially. Instead of the huge monstrosities most EVs currently seem to use which are huge, as they also include gearing and such. Still leaves more space for battery without having to go unsprung with hub motors.
Aptera wanted to do this with their flagship Solar Electric Vehicle (SEV).
IIRC, they switched to an outwheel motor because of the weight the inwheel motors added to the wheels. Could be wrong tho
Aptera
LOL. Coming soon…since 2009
For real lmao
Waiting for the zeta pre-production ‘final-final-REALLY-FINAL’ build
Hub motors are a party trick. They will never reach mass market in a car.
They might work in the rear if used instead of rear brakes. Rears do far less work anyway and brakes are heavy. Powerful electric motors can do a lot of regen, similarly assisting the front brakes.
I’ve had near 8 kilogram rear brake disks on a diesel wagon, not even a performance car that would require huge brakes, current car is 5. Calipers weigh a bunch too. Pads themselves are light, but still add to the whole setup.
They work well on bikes. I could appreciate 1000bhp hub on my 12kg touring bike. 🤭
I agree, they are good for minimally suspended low speed personal transport.
German company DeepDrive has some kinda promising tech. And the ID.Polo seems to be said to have hub motors.
Not even the concept had hub motors.
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/volkswagen-id-polo
https://electricarworld.com/volkswagen-polo-makes-a-comeback-as-an-electric-car/
https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/electric-vehicles/volkswagen-id-polo-gti-breaks-cover-at-iaa-mobility-comes-as-reborn-polo-gti-41757316409552.htmlLimited slip differential? Can’t do that with hub motors. https://www.topgear.com.ph/news/car-news/volkswagen-id-polo-prototype-a5100-20250908
If you have different information about a production car, please share it. The theoretical concept ID.2 R may use hub motors but that is vaporware at this point.
I only have german articles. I only heard it in the video source below, and they sadly don’t really say how the normal problems with hub motors would be solved even though they have a section for it in the video.
https://www.electrive.net/2025/06/20/vw-soll-neues-topmodell-id-2-r-mit-radnabenmotoren-erwaegen/
Renault 5 RS Turbo has hub motors, Nostradamus.
mass market
There’ll be 1,980 of these builtThat car is the definition of a party trick. You proved my point, so thank you.
Right, because 2000 of something is not mass production.
And here is a source in China definitely not making >20 hub motors for cars, scooters, etc.
And BMW did not invest $30M in DeepDrive, hub motor supplier.
You should tell these people they are all stupid.
No, less than 2000 cars is not mass market.
To secure your order for one of the 1,980 examples of Renault 5 Turbo 3E, contact us below. You’ll get a call back very soon to make an appointment to reserve in the retailer.
Sounds very limited market.Those are golf cart and scooter motors, not suitable for highways
BMW currently uses brushed motors in their EVs so I’m not looking to them for any advice. Maybe BMW wants their traditional central layout CM450 tech. But! DeepDrive is the first hub motor I’ve seen that did not need gearing, so that is actually cool. I think they’ll be relegated to rear wheels due to scrub radius limitations but that could be ok.
Renault 5 RS Turbo
That’s because its a limited run show car. Its not meant to be practical.
Imagine on a motorcycle… Probably nonstop wheely 🤣
Probably nonstop wheely
uni-motorcycle
They make sense for scooters, bikes, and other low speed or two wheel personal transport. For anything with an actual suspension (designed for a highway) there is just too much competition for space with brakes and suspension linkage. The unsprung weight, exposed high voltage cabling subject to road debris and accidents are problems too. And what to do hub motors really gain you?
Simplicity, no transmission. As to unsprung weight, designs like these have a ridiculous power density, so add only very little. Advanced suspensions are active anyway, so just part of the wheel robot.
They DO require transmissions! A single speed planetary gear set is still required, same as current EV drives.
Find me a hub motor datasheet with quoted power and torque below 1000 rpms. The YASA datasheets are all out to 8000 rpms. Useless at wheel speed.
They’re quoting 30 second power numbers and dry weight without a gearbox. They’re fishing for dumb money.
A single speed planetary gear set
Sure, get semantic.
I’m looking for benefits over current EV drivetrains. So far, there aren’t any.
Less weight, less parts, 4WD, 4W traction control, more cabin space because no driveshafts.
This is already pretty close to how many EVs are designed.
Except for the fact that that much power would need massive batteries. So your thin small battery would be dead the first time you mashed the peddle to the floor
forgot the part where they were excited to put the batteries on the tire
My eScooter weighs 42 pounds.
A 28 pound motor that’s 750 kW?
Holy fuck.
That’s power density straight out of science fiction
Ebike would probably fold in half from the torque lol
It only does that at peak for a few seconds, practically, about a third that power.
So only 250kw continuous. How shit. Pffffffffffffft!
Had an ex-friend who was a motorhead arguing that electric motors will never beat ICE because they lack comparable torque. Look, I’m no mechanic, but I never got my head around that.
“You mean they don’t have enough torque to run a US destroyer?! Someone should call the Navy.”
Seriously, if you’ve played with even a tiny electric motor, provide DC, it goes, instantly. What could he have possibly been trying to say?
Electric motors don’t have a torque curve like ICE, which is why they don’t need a transmission. Those massive submarines run on electric motors.
What could he have possibly been trying to say?
I mean, the general appeal of ICE engines is the fuel, not the engine. Gasoline is generally more energy dense than lithium.
Nah, his complaint was lack of torque. Very strange, never got it. Figured he was repeating fossil fuel propaganda. But he was a motorhead!
And yes, energy density is the thing no one talks about when raging against fossil fuels. A gallon of refined gasoline packs insane energy. I’ve run my 5-gallon, crappy Harbor Freight generator all night into the morning, powering the camp, heaters and all, never came close to emptying it. Contrast that with a monster LIPO4 battery that died in 48-hours only powering LED lights. (Gotta admit, something weird happened there.)
Nah, his complaint was lack of torque.
Maybe just had torque confused with horsepower? That’s been the historical trade-off between gas and electric. Sure, its very easy to get an electric motor to jump into action. But it is comparatively difficult to generate the same amount of power with equivalent fuel density.
A gallon of refined gasoline packs insane energy.
Much of which is lost to heat when combusted, which is the historical hang-up.
Not that batteries don’t have their own heating problems. But the benefit of batteries is that they’re an engineering problem we can solve with miniaturization, which we’ve become incredibly good at. We’re at a soft ceiling in terms of engine chemistry. Petroleum is about as refined as we’re going to get it. Combustion’s math is what it is. Improvements to the efficiency of modern engines have stalled out as an automotive tool, even to the point that a gas engine powering an electric capacitor in a hybrid yields performance improvements over the gas engine just spinning the wheels directly.
It is funny because electric motors have nearly unlimited* torque depending on the kind. If you have thick enough power cables and winding conductors, you can just keep pushing it harder to get more torque.
It is like the thing they are very good at, besides sound levels, double or triple the efficiency, low/no maintenance, simpler with less parts, no emissions, etc…
Literally the only good thing about combustion engines are their fuel source energy density.
I think the problem is that motorheads see the enshittification of the auto industry as a whole and just say it’s because of electric motors because it happened right about the same time as EVs started coming out and try to push back on the wrong thing.
I would love to replace work van with an electric one, but so far it’s not possible for one main reason (other than cost)…I often tow quite heavy trailers and my diesel can tow 2500kg, but every electric van I’ve looked at can only tow 750kg. Maybe it’s something to do with that?
I think he was trying to admit he doesn’t know shit about electric motors.
Tool companies need to nerf electric motors in drills to prevent wrists from breaking.
“EVs lack comparable torque to ICE” - guy in my rearview mirror
My parents had an original Prius and it was a weedy little car that made those two hippies really happy. If that was his only experience with electric cars I can see why he’d think that.
But the new ones are fucking rockets. I just don’t understand why they need all that. Can they make a cheaper one that’s got 300 horsepower?
The electric motor capacity also accounts for scenarios like a heavily loaded car going uphill with poor weather conditions.
And because it always can dump full power into the wheels instantly, unlike ICE cars (which are forced to burn an insanely wasteful amount of fuel to compete) that means every EV made for normal use has ridiculous acceleration
. I just don’t understand why they need all that.
Power sells, they can give that insane 0-60 sprint for very low cost, so it gets people to buy their product instead of a 6 liter V8.
I guess I’m really lamenting the death of the shitbox econo car.
It’s so sad, because we could make really great shitbox econo cars now. China, Japan and India are doing it, meanwhile in the U.S. we’re needing side-step assistance to climb into our tower-viewing position $80K+ ROADMASTER trucks and SUVs.
Usually the electric cars with a larger motor are also more efficient, since the motor does not have to run near its peak all the time.
I put my hybrid into sport mode when I actually need the acceleration, like quick highway merges or cramped city turns in traffic. If I kept it in eco mode like I normally do, or even just normal mode, the acceleration would be limited and I’d either be unable to merge or would cause an accident.
Yeah drivers in my area are shitty, I know. Unfortunately I can’t flip a switch and change their behavior.
Also sometimes it’s just plain fun to go zoom (when safe, obviously).
I have the same sort of fun in my manual transmission gas car
You probably need to downshift and rev it up to above 4000rpm to get near peak torque. And torque is lower below and above that.
An electric motor can hit peak torque at 0rpm. And maintain that peak torque up to, idk, faster than you or I will ever drive a vehicle. It’s available instantly, always.
If you get a chance, try driving the slowest, most boring electric car you can find. It will surprise you.
He was trying to say that he spent too much time in a media bubble disconnected from reality.
These same idiots tell me my hybrid battery will only last 20,000 miles a cost $50,000 to replace. Yeah sure.
Yea I’ve been hearing that one since 2003 with my original Prius. That battery lasted 23 years before it crapped out, and modern battery tech is waaaaay better than that thing. Also it wouldn’t have been that much money to refurbish the battery if it hadn’t been too smashed up to bother.
Dunno, I feel every rev head knew about that evs have no torque curve and plenty of it. The concern to me head always been weight and range when on track. EVs are great in straight line, but have a lot more momentum in corners. They generally have narrower tires as well, which is great for range, but poor for grip
I need to torque a shit
If we put electrified tracks down we could all drive ridiculously overpowered tiny traincars.
Maybe we can also have them drive themselves and link them up for more efficiency also have them as a service so not everyone has to own their own and we can reduce overhead on servicing and infrastructure and … trains.
but then u cant splatter pedestrians and cyclists on the pavement like overmicrowaved hotpockets or ram the car in front of u for not going fast enough or brake check the one behind you for being to close or…
Make them stone tracks, because steel is too expensive, then make the wheels of gum, because steel wheels have too less friction. Then you have a street and a car.
“YASA” sounds like a mashup between YMCA and NASA. Even their logo looks like the Y’s.
YMCA NASA colab would’ve been lit though
