New EV Motor is Smaller, Lighter and more Powerful

The whole automotive industry is fascinating at the moment. After years of incremental advances in the ICE market, the EV industry is bringing a host of revolutionary changes. New innovations seem to be landing almost daily to solve the current issues we have with EVs and automobiles in general. As has been discussed on this blog countless times, batteries are a key technology and scientists around the world are working to make them more energy dense, environmentally friendly, lighter, safer, and charge faster. As current EV technology is relatively new, there are opportunities to improve almost every area of the vehicles, including the overall architecture. Along with the battery, the most important component of the EV is the electrical motor required to propel the vehicle.

Electrical motors are not a new technology, but the EV industry has challenged motor designers to improve existing designs beyond recognition to increase performance and efficiency, while decreasing weight to provide better range. These designers also face other demands from vehicle manufacturers. Currently there is a trend to move from 400V architecture to 800V which will help in the fight to increase efficiency, and also reduce the weight of the vehicle by cutting currents and therefore the weight of the conductors required to carry them, and less weight directly equates to more range. 800V architectures will also provide much faster charging, which has now taken over as the primary concern of EV owners since range problems have been overcome.

Other challenges for motor designers include reducing the amount of rare-earth minerals in the construction of the devices. Despite the name, rare-earths are not so much rare as they are difficult to extract in useable quantities. That extraction also causes a lot of environmental harm. In motors, they provide the strong permanent magnets that the motors need to perform optimally and operate efficiently. They also add expense to the design, and as we currently rely on China for the majority of rare-earth materials, their supply chain is uncertain.

One prominent manufacturer of motors for EVs has just announced its latest solution, which has been designed to tackle all of the challenges mentioned above. Magna claims its next generation 800V eDrive motor sets new standards in efficiency, power-to-weight ratio and torque density. The new motors are a drop-in solution that use advanced technologies to reduce weight and size, enhance performance, extend driving range and provide greater sustainability. They weigh only 75 kg and have a 20% reduction in height from the company’s last generation eDrive.

The motor design allows rotation of the eDrive 90 degrees around the drive axis, which allows improved system integration in the front and rear of the vehicle. According to Magna, this is a supplier industry-first. The system achieves up to 93% efficiency in real-world driving, and can improve efficiency across a wide range of vehicle speeds.

Diba Ilunga, President of Powertrain at Magna said, "Through seamless integration of our systems, we have successfully reduced our reliance on aluminum and heavy rare earth materials, resulting in a significant reduction of CO₂ emissions during production by approximately 20% compared to previous generation eDrives."

The new eDrive design can be applied as a primary or complementary secondary drive solution with an optional eDecoupling unit for vehicles in the C, D, and E segments. It delivers a peak power of 250 kW and a peak axle torque of 5,000 Nm.

www.magna.com