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Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

media.mercedes-benz.com

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Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#181

Post by Grombobulous »

kakacik wrote: post #137
Grombobulous wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am somewhat confused at the intensity of pushback for the statement “leading electric vehicles.” Chinese EVs are leading and that doesn’t necessarily mean being the best, most advanced vehicles. They are leading in value/pricing, and in many regions they are leading in sales. BYD sells almost double the EV volume of Tesla globally as of December 2025. They are objectively leading in that respect. I think the parent…

I wouldnt be so harsh even with chinese combustion engines, its at this point a meme that is just copy pasted because everybody says so, but without actual experience. People dont understand how China is 3x bigger than Europe and 4x bigger than US, the scale of that market is absurd and competition numerous and fierce. I've had MG suv rented recently with just gasoline engine and it was fine. This comes from long ter…

True, and on a similar wavelength, nobody seems to care that Kia/Hyundai engines are super mid.

Heck, nobody seems to care that Toyota engines/transmissions sound like a vacuum cleaner and have pretty mediocre NVH on models like the Corolla, but they buy those products for reliability and efficiency.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#182

Post by amunozo »

mohsen1 wrote: post #99
miohtama wrote: post #87

Mercedes acquired Yasa (UK) couple of years ago and now getting up to the speed in the production. Here is a nice video that explains axial flux motors with a factory visit https://youtu.be/B2Hl4c1iZK0?si=VfDYARyuaPVj1nKm They are so, so, small.

I was curious how this thing works and asked Claude to visualize it -- mostly to see how good Fable is and I have to say, what it made was good enough for me to get a gist of it. Posted it here https://azimi.me/axial-flux-motor-explainer/

You made this with Fable? How many prompt? It is amazing.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#183

Post by bluGill »

DrBazza wrote: post #169
pjc50 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese EV industry is actually lead by development of batteries , especially CATL. Along with the pack engineering, which is good old Mech.E stuff about heat transfer and physical strength. Secondarily power electronics; at that scale, you can't just pick a bigger transistor and call it a day. By comparison the motors seem to be a mostly solved problem, although I'm sure there's still some scope for power-to-wei…

And is development of batteries (and better magnetics) not just chemical engineering and material science? Motors might be a 'solved problem' - there might not be much innovation, Maxwell's laws aren't changing any time soon, but there will surely be a lot of incremental improvement - an early 1900s ICE is considerably worse than a 2000s ICE.

> n early 1900s ICE is considerably worse than a 2000s ICE.

But how much worse is a early 1900s electric motor from a modern one? I can't find data, but I suspect the first electric motor from the 1830s is more efficient than a modern ICE (even if we assume the ICE is built for efficiency, screw emissions). There is some room for improvement, but there isn't much difference between our best motors and perfection (a carnot cycle by contrast is as best much worse than perfection)

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#184

Post by klaff »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #80

Only slightly related but does anyone know anything about motors with magnetic bearings? As in, no contact or friction. I'm looking for a hardware project

There are fluid dynamic bearings which were used in VCRs and probably hard drives and definitely laser printer mirror motors - two sets of precise herringbone patterns cut into the ID of a bearing column and a tiny bit of oil that gets entrained between rotor shaft and that bearing column. As the motor speeds up the oil forms pressurized donuts. Only works at speed and generally only useful when there aren't side loads so applications are limited. Rolling element bearings are a quite developed technology and hard to beat in most applications.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#185

Post by bluGill »

graftak wrote: post #140
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying there isn't room for innovation but... Electric motors have been around for a century now already in many applications. It's not like the Dawn of the steam engine

According to wikipedia[1] the first industrial steam engine (1712) was invented almost 100 years before the invention of the steam locomotive (1804), arguably its greatest evolutionary feat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steam_engine

The timeline of the electric motor isn't much behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_electric_motor.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#186

Post by mohsen1 »

utopiah wrote: post #171
mohsen1 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code is here https://github.com/mohsen1/axial-flux-motor-explainer Feel free to steal! This was one shot with Claude Code. You can take it and adopt it to your need

Oof... well thanks for sharing but that's basically unusable for me. It neatly all packed in a 2MB file containing all assets, threejs, etc. I assumed it's based on a three.js template due to the `Rendered live with three.js · Drag anywhere to orbit the model` kind of showcase but unfortunately that's not linked. I also imagine the 3D models are more that primitives (at least the arrows showcasing the flow) but I don…

I mentioned elsewhere too. This was a one-shot thing that made me wow so I thought I share. You're kind with your comments but others are just hating it, even so I said 1. I don't know this motor technology and 2. It was a one shot experiment

If I had time and making a polished web page was my goal I could probably do better but this was not the point!

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#187

Post by ElijahLynn »

miohtama wrote: post #87

Mercedes acquired Yasa (UK) couple of years ago and now getting up to the speed in the production. Here is a nice video that explains axial flux motors with a factory visit https://youtu.be/B2Hl4c1iZK0?si=VfDYARyuaPVj1nKm They are so, so, small.

Great video!

So it looks like axial flux, the OG was introduced in 1820 something and it wasn't easy to manufacture. So radio flux came after that and has been around ever since. So axial flux is making its come back this year!

The video is very interesting too about decompounding returns when the motor is less with the other things need to weigh less too.

Especially the bit about potentially not needing brakes in the near future because the regen is so capable. Which would lead to less weight and less parts even again!

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#188

Post by bluGill »

superxpro12 wrote: post #139
aitchnyu wrote: post #29

Tangential, how much regen can this system support? For example, can a car with 200kW propulsion have a 400kW regen (Tesla has upto 65) and are cost effective like friction brakes?

All motors are generators. It's only a matter of how you are creating the magnetic field with the stator windings. In order to generate a higher regen, you'd have to somehow get more energy in the motor first... and since its only rated for 200kW, good ol' physics limits you, IF thats all the energy you put into the system. If you roll it down a hill, or do something exotic like inverting the magnetic fields .... you…

In general the rating of a motor is about heat dissipation, which in turn is a function of efficiency. What this means is you can exceed the rating by "some amount" for "some amount of time". Many motors are rated for not what they can deliver, but what they can deliver continuously without overheating, but you can get a lot more power out of them for a short time.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#189

Post by genewitch »

Grombobulous wrote: post #108
picofarad wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. How do you know this for a fact? Chinese press releases? You've driven one? Some auto blogger drove one? After world war 2 Gorbachev or whoever visited the United States and during that trio visited a supermarket. He thought it was a facade, possibly, put on just for him, there's no way Americans are this prosperous (or whatever, this good at agriculture, farm…

I am somewhat confused at the intensity of pushback for the statement “leading electric vehicles.” Chinese EVs are leading and that doesn’t necessarily mean being the best, most advanced vehicles. They are leading in value/pricing, and in many regions they are leading in sales. BYD sells almost double the EV volume of Tesla globally as of December 2025. They are objectively leading in that respect. I think the parent…

you consider the question asked to be "intense"?

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#190

Post by rswail »

pfdietz wrote: post #163
rswail wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need an axle? Put the engine and its transmission to the wheel mounted next to each wheel. No need for differentials etc, if they can work out a steering mechanism for each, then you've got 4WD with 4W steering. In the video there's talk of how you can use them as regenerative braking as well, so have that as part of the wheel structure. No axles, no differentials, independent suspension, electronically co…

Wouldn't putting them in the wheel increase unsprung mass, which would degrade the feel of the car?

I think he was talking about small engines the size/weight of existing disk brake assemblies. So either no change or weight reduction.
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