Electric mobility offers the possibility of combining transportation with environment friendly technologies, which would reduce greenhouse effects and enhance air quality. Besides the obvious issues concerning high oil prices, internal combustion engines (ICEs) are very inefficient in converting chemical energy in fuel to mechanical energy. More than 60% of energy losses can be attributed to ICE. In addition, drivetrain and standby losses are equal to more than 5% and 17%, and around 3% can be assigned to accessory consumption, which means that the final energy output is below 15%. Electric motors, on the other hand, offer energy efficiencies higher than 90%. Research and design in this field of automotive industry is not new, as the early electric vehicles date back to the 19th century. In recent decades, these motors were mostly installed centrally to the vehicle so the need for the drivetrain and consequential energy losses remained. Direct drive in-wheel motors were also introduced in the 19h century since they enable the overcoming of the need for gearing and simplifying the propulsion system. The negligible development since then can be attributed to too demanding technological challenges, as the motors need to be light and compact, while producing very high continuous torque. Elaphe Propulsion Technologies Ltd., offers a solution for overcoming the design challenges with combining several innovations and development method which is briefly presented in this paper.
Elaphe in-wheel motor technology and the global electric' vehicle and renewable energy ecosystem
2013
4 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 4 Quellen
Conference paper
English
WHEEL HUB, WHEEL HUB MOTOR VEHICLE WHEEL, AND ELECTRIC VEHICLE
European Patent Office | 2017
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