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

media.mercedes-benz.com

221–230 of 362 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every plausibly cool electric car innovation leads me to the same thought: “5-10 years from now, the restomod potential will be wild once these come down in cost.” For this, I am imagining retrofitting a Pontiac Fiero to reduce as much weight as possible and see if extended flight becomes possible.

Number 1 problem is battery weight though. Not electric motors. I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.

Yeah, my comment was hand-waving away a bit of the reality of it, but swap the Fiero engine for a battery and some of these and it's got to be close to achieving full lift.

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

#222
post #202

For family cars we need 4x 30-50 hp units. If the motor can weigh around 7 kg it can be placed directly on wheel. Adding durable brake discs (rarely used) and 2 inverters front ad back and we have the EV platform of the next 100 years

do we need disk brakes?

As opposed to relying solely on engine braking (or the EV equivalent thereof)?

I'd personally prefer a belt-and-suspenders approach.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number 1 problem is battery weight though. Not electric motors. I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.

I think the cited weight loss comes from energy efficiency gains leading to less battery capacity needed.

In the video the yasa guy said most of the weight loss is from getting rid of the yoke.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every plausibly cool electric car innovation leads me to the same thought: “5-10 years from now, the restomod potential will be wild once these come down in cost.” For this, I am imagining retrofitting a Pontiac Fiero to reduce as much weight as possible and see if extended flight becomes possible.

Number 1 problem is battery weight though. Not electric motors. I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.

its less hard than you'd think unless you're really going for long range.

for my sailboat I am getting rid of a 300lbs diesel and a 30gallon fuel tank with a 45lbs PMAC.

That means I have opened up about 465lbs for batteries.

Now, with a sailboat you're never truly out of range -- but the point stands : these things are so much lighter than ICEs on average that there is a lot of opportunity even with battery weight as it is (and it's getting better daily).

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

#225
post #116
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

The issue with this is, without an expert, how do I know I am getting an accurate representation?

The question is for you to answer, first. Gotta do that work. (My answer will differ from yours.)

Then, predictably, finding the collection of supporting details + vetting the content in question.

This is an issue we, technology-folk, ought to help guide our non-tech-co-folk through engaging with, BTW. Our responsibility is rising with tech becoming more deeply entrenched / required for society's operations.

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

#226
post #132
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't. You didn't know before either. The difference is trust. How do you trust it as much as you do the hypothetical humans making such representations? That's up to you.

I think humans develop expertise and brand names and get called out when they make mistakes and if they are too wrong, their reputation is damaged. This doesn’t seem to apply to AI for some reason. It keeps generating incorrect results after incorrect results, yet people continue to trust its output. I don’t know what to make of this.

"Trust" is an abused term, nowadays.

Human trust differs from mathematical trust. And branding / marketing abuses the ambiguity.

There is no shame in a "likely to hallucinate" model that can be instantiated 1,000 times across 1,000 different machines spread throughout our planet. So, human trust is broken by machine trust.

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

#227
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think this actually provided much above a paragraph of text. The visuals didn't show much, and I learnt a lot more from one of the YouTube videos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCO633KE7RA ) posted below. It's neat that a whole interactive deck can be produced without effort. But it's just not very interesting.

Yeah, I'm at once awed that something like that can be auto-generated (I presume?) and disappointed that it doesn't usefully or practically improve my understanding, beyond written synopses and human videos, at all. Stuff like this reminds me that we still need a human in the loop to edit, to improve, to advance. Auto-from-scratch just doesn't really achieve anything of actual value.

It's unfortunately just slop.

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

#228
post #175
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it means the motor is smaller and it can be put into the wheel

It doesn't make that a good idea. Armature losses are proportional to torque squared - doesn't matter if it is radial or axial design. That's why all the EVs today have gear boxes with ratios like 13:1. Get rid of that gearbox and the steady-state losses go up with the square of that ratio. Then there are the issues of sprung mass, and where to put the mechanical brakes.

>gear boxes with ratios like 13:1.

you add planetary gears

>sprung mass

you can integrate all into one hub (breaks, bearings, gears etc) and it weights pretty much the same.

what you gain is more space for a bigger battery, torque vectoring, no loss on diff and CVs

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every plausibly cool electric car innovation leads me to the same thought: “5-10 years from now, the restomod potential will be wild once these come down in cost.” For this, I am imagining retrofitting a Pontiac Fiero to reduce as much weight as possible and see if extended flight becomes possible.

Number 1 problem is battery weight though. Not electric motors. I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.

Something to keep in mind with hub motors is that they’re unsprung weight, vs the battery pack is pretty much always sprung. While that’s not a huge differentiator for efficiency, it sure cuts down on the abuse the wheels and hub motors will experience

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

#230
post #202

For family cars we need 4x 30-50 hp units. If the motor can weigh around 7 kg it can be placed directly on wheel. Adding durable brake discs (rarely used) and 2 inverters front ad back and we have the EV platform of the next 100 years

do we need disk brakes?

Yes, you must be able to stop independently in the case of some kind of total power failure in the drivetrain.
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