Featured Awesome axial flux motor

What is cost and efficiency versus say the switched reluctance motors?

 

does it cut down on rare earth's?

 

Couldn't find any information but seeing as it is oil cooled itis doubtful that it is 99%, there is friction and heat from exciting the motor. The switched relcutance tesla motor has peak efficiency of 97% over a large rpm range. YASA seems to be saying lhigher power density in terms of power to weight and power to size, means it is more efficent as a system. That maybe. It currently is only going into super cars, which looks like maybe high costs, but perhaps low volumes and if volumes come then costs could come down. Would love some more information. Seems like a good choice for a motorcycle hub motor if costs can come down.

YASA says it uses less magnetic material than PM, but this is similar to claims by most hybrid motors like the switched reluctance.

 

Axial flux motors can be made with or without permanent magnets.

If you want to get rid of the rare earth magnetic material you need either excited field-rotor motors (serial, shunt, etc), induction motors, or pure reluctance motors. Of those reluctance motors are the most efficient but would likely need a transmission and multiple gears. The permanent-magnet-reluctance motors used in Teslas and Toyota hybrids (and perhaps others) have the advantage of having good torque over a large RPM range.

 

Nice concept. But who has licensed it? No press releases on their web site. Capacity of producing 25k units per year?

An idea/patent is proven good when it is making $$$$.

 

Yes they bought them as an independant subsidiery 5 years ago. This article tells the innovation that is trying to make this over 100 year old technology relevent.

Axial Flux Motor Powers Supercars to New Heights - IEEE Spectrum

Which gives a clue on why they currently are only in low volume supercars in the automotive sector. It probably is quite a high manufacturing cost. Perhaps with money from its parent company they can reduce costs. Tesla's carbon fiber wrapped rotors in its plaid cars uses a similar idea using expensive composite manufacturing techniques to reduce weight and add power (trade iron for carbon fiber which not only reduces weight but allows higher rpm allowing more power because the fiber allows hotter motors to run efficiently). Tesla is claiming they are working on manufacturing techniques to make manufacturing much cheaper. YASA just built or is building a new factory. We will know costs are down when mercedes puts it in a car that is less than $100,000 instead of these over $500K beasts.

 

For tesla it increases cost but decreases weight and increases power. The model 3/Y rear motor is 96% peak efficiency and is efficient in a wide rage. Tesla says they are working on reducing cost, if they do that I would expect it to appear in lower priced cars than the discontinued plaid model S/X. I do see a bunch of cybercabs being tested on the streets. First one was, what no rear window, but I guess if its driverless the camera is important not a human seeing through a window. If cf wrapped rotors become cheap enough I would expect them in the cybercab and the performance models first. Rumor was it was going into the model 2 which doesn't appear like tesla will ever make one.

One can hope that YASA or someone else can make these composites cheap to manufacture. Tolerances in the axial motor are really tight. Who knows. People didn't think lithium battery packs could be made as inexpensively as they are today. On a hub design axial makes a lot of sense, but in a car repair costs from vibration and inertia have made these an engineering difficulty versus inboard motors. We can hope manufacturing improvements can greatly reduce costs.