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Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

supercarblondie.com

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Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#231
post #180
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's Not really. EV's are very heavy from non-motor weight. A Model Y weighs ~4300 lbs. A motor that is 75 lbs lighter is a 1.7% savings. That's not nothing, but I wouldn't say "significant". You can do better by swapping for fancy wheels or eliminating some of the glass roof. And really this is true up and down the electric vehicle world. Weight-sensitive applications…

It’s great anywhere you want more power but are limited by space and/or weight for performance reasons. Aerospace, e-bikes, electric race vehicles, electric motorcycles. But yeah, EVs seem weird except for racing reasons perhaps. What I can’t figure out is how they dissipate the heat - double digits kw per kg is crazy.

    The YASA axial flux motors benefit from much shorter windings and direct oil cooling which gives an unparalleled performance proposition.  
      
    A 200kW peak-power radial motor, run continuously, might typically give 50% of peak power between 80 and 100kW, as a result of thermal limitations. In contrast, a 200kW YASA motor runs continuously at 150kW thanks to the improved high-thermal-contact cooling that oil offers.
From https://yasa.com/technology/

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#232
post #225
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you however I believe weight and safety are in a complex relationship right now, which has nothing to do with performance and handling. Unfortunately I feel much less safe in a Fiat 500 when a significant portion of cars in the road weigh nearly 3 tonnes and perhaps can't even see me. I suspect most people are in SUVs because they're the pragmatic trade off between safety and convenience, not because the…

Tax SUVs out of existence.

A basic BMW 5 series is over 2 tonnes, with the top spec model tipping the scales at 2.5 tonnes. I mean I agree with the general sentiment but it's not just SUVs that need to go on a diet. Everything is getting heavier and heavier and heavier.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#233
post #180
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's Not really. EV's are very heavy from non-motor weight. A Model Y weighs ~4300 lbs. A motor that is 75 lbs lighter is a 1.7% savings. That's not nothing, but I wouldn't say "significant". You can do better by swapping for fancy wheels or eliminating some of the glass roof. And really this is true up and down the electric vehicle world. Weight-sensitive applications…

It’s great anywhere you want more power but are limited by space and/or weight for performance reasons. Aerospace, e-bikes, electric race vehicles, electric motorcycles. But yeah, EVs seem weird except for racing reasons perhaps. What I can’t figure out is how they dissipate the heat - double digits kw per kg is crazy.

Again, no, because the motor needs to be powered and the battery is vastly larger than the motor already in any of those applications. Even in RC planes, which fly for 5-6 minutes at a time, the battery is 5x or more the weight of the motor, wiring and controller logic.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#234
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you can make the motor and a suitable reduction box lighter than the equivalent bearing and driveshaft combination you could make the suspension arms mechanically simpler. By using motors at each wheel you'd eliminate the need for a differential, saving a good 40-50kg or so. Of course, if you kept the drive shafts and put the motor and reduction box in the middle, you'd be able to use inboard brakes and sa…

I wonder if that would be legal, or if there is a regulation about where you can put your brakes?

I’ve generally assumed that brakes are in the wheel because they’re not all that massive, they get decent cooling airflow in the wheel, and they can produce enormous amounts of torque.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#235
post #50
post #18

Everything but the Metric System: “The new YASA axial flux motor weighs just 28 pounds, or about the same as a small dog.” :)

I wonder if Americans don't have a mental image for measurement units so that they alway use some physical object as a reference. Sure, its useful to use a common object as a reference but I don't see that much often in other places. Most people usually understand what it means something to be 20 meters, 5kg or 2 liters intuitively. Like, when I hear that something is 60m tall I intuitively think if it as 20 story ap…

Yes I'm always a bit dumbfounded by this behavior as well. They always use weird stuff and I never have the intuition of the actual size, especially since the definition can vary depending on context.

In this case, what is actually considered to be a small dog? To me it would be something that is close to the size of a cat but since it's about 13kg, it can't be that small, so that's more like a medium dog (I'm not certain, but I have a feeling that if you lay out things statistically this is what you would end up with). On the other hand, 13kg is very easy to get, that's just 13 liters of water, and it's quite easy to make a mental image for both volume and weight "feeling" that way.

American units feel so impressive and random, it is the reason they always add those weird comparisons but often they make it even worse.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcycles I could imagine. Do e-bikes really need significantly more power than they have? They already run arguably dangerously fast for their application. Is efficiency not the primary target there?

e-bikes don't necessarily need more power but they could benefit from a smaller and lighter motor. If it becomes small enough to "disappear" in the pedal assembly for example, it would allow more design/parts commonality with normal bikes and fit more people's aesthetic criteria. The lower weight would be definitely welcome, my ebike is comically heavy compared to a normal one and sometimes I have to carry it up flig…

There are some advantages to hub motors in an e-bike, and if the motor and an appropriate gearing system could be made light enough the disadvantages would be reduced.

Oddly, a very large majority of current fully suspended e-bikes with rear cargo racks have those racks unsprung, which suggests that most e-bike manufacturers don’t actually care about the handling of anything other than their pure e-MTBs.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#238
post #6

Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's, because 1/4 of the motor weight means better power-to-weight ratio... a lot of things will automatically get better. YASA was founded in 2009, a spin out from Oxford University following the PhD of founder and still CTO, Dr Tim Woolmer. "Over the decades that followed both of these technologies were explored. But despite the potential for weight reduction, smaller…

> In 2025, after a £12m investment, YASA opened the UK's first axial-flux super factory, in Oxfordshire.

It’s a little sad to me that fundamental innovations in electromechanical engineering like this get just a few million in investment, yet if this had been yet another derivative software startup with “AI” in the pitch, they’d probably have 10x+ or more investments being thrown at them.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#239
post #6

Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's, because 1/4 of the motor weight means better power-to-weight ratio... a lot of things will automatically get better. YASA was founded in 2009, a spin out from Oxford University following the PhD of founder and still CTO, Dr Tim Woolmer. "Over the decades that followed both of these technologies were explored. But despite the potential for weight reduction, smaller…

> According to YASA, this is achieved without using exotic or expensive materials, so the design could actually be scalable once the demand kicks in.

That is ever more special

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why limit only to cars? Can this be used for motorcycles, e-bikes, electric buses, train wheels, e-unicycles, electric golf carts, etc? There are probably a range of application where in-wheel makes perfect sense.

Yeah, my first thought was racing EUC’s, lol….

End User Credentials ? Everyone Uses Cars ? Engineered Universal Conscience? (Since you seem to assume we all share your thoughts & context...)
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