Featured High efficiency EV motor

The problem I see with higher efficiency motors is that it's not going to make that much difference. Increasing motor efficiency will help give you a couple more miles of range on an EV, but not much more than that.

Generally speaking, most of your energy in an EV is going to go to pushing around air. This is even more of a problem with the world's infatuation with SUV's and pickup trucks, and why I hope Aptera not only makes their two seater, but goes on to make 4-or-more seaters.

After that, weight, or rolling resistance, is the second biggest issue. As of now, EV's are the heavyweights of the car industry.

Then from there, making the power grid more efficient would make a bigger difference than increasing motor efficiency.

But yes, more efficient motors is nice. It'll help get us a couple more miles of range.

 

how did lucid achieve their self proclaimed highest efficiency ev?

 

agreed. trying to sell ev's based on efficiency are a losers game, as are lucids financials

 

From what I have read…

• They have a smaller front silhouette thus less air resistance.
• They engineered their motors, inverters, cabling components and other parts to be as light as possible.
• They also use larger capacity battery packs, which gives them more range at the cost of some of the efficiency improvements.

 

They use silicon-carbide electronics and 900+V system voltages among other things. The drive unit is more powerful, and half the weight of the Taycan's. Sounds like they a two speed transmission in it, like the Taycan, but for both front and rear.

Their CEO headed Model S development.
Lucid Motors Creates The World’s Most Advanced Battery-Electric Car: A Conversation With CEO Peter Rawlinson

 

Lowly G4 Prime stator. Did Lucid get their windings ideas from Toyota, or vice versa?

 

I don't remember the gen3 traction motor making 650hp.

I don't think the square winding wire was even new for Toyota. It doesn't appear to be a continuous loom winding like Lucid's.

Does Toyota pump ATF through the individual fingers of the stator for cooling?

Lucid mounts the differential inside the rotor shaft.

Found a tl;dr video.

 

The lucid video also shows the Porsche stator with similarity to the lucid. The lucid one is one piece and eight sections in the rotor segments which they say is the most of any. But the weaving design isn’t original to lucid it doesn’t look like.

Every manuf. would make a video showing why they made it their way and their way is the best. The middle stator must be from a tesla. I was thinking Ford, but probably not. They said “American.”

My bet is Toyota is the best and most reliable design.

 

They didn't claim that was original. That is in the continuous loom weave they developed.

I didn't watch the segments, but they also had primers to EV motor design theory in there That got praise in at least one article.

It was from a model S or X. Tesla is the only other EV maker with tri-motor designs. Plus, Lucid's CEO was once in charge of developing the Model S at Tesla.

Perhaps most reliable. Electric motors simply are by their nature. Lucid's winding technique does mean it has just a tenth of the weld points of other motors using comparable design. Weld points are weak points, plus they can introduce inefficiencies to the motor. Lucid also has serviceable fluid filters.

By other metrics, Toyota's isn't the best. Lucid and Tesla have better efficiency and performance.

 

650 what? I couldn't tell if that was in response to something earlier in the thread.

I think the gen 3 MGs are run at up to 650 volts, if that might have been something that came up.

 

It was in response to bringing up the gen3 traction motor; M/G2 is around 80hp.
The Lucid is 650+hp. Its stator appears to be around the same diameter as the M/G2's, and a little wider. The system voltage of the Lucid is over 900V; IIRC, 926V

 

Reliable until their bearings wear out. Replaced a HVAC blower motor last year after 17 years. Huge thing. Kept the old one as there is a electric motor refurbisher in town that I'll take it to if I ever need another. Fortunate to have saved bathroom tiles, roofing shingles, etc from the build as all have been used in repairs.

 

I realized they didn’t say the loom was their original when they talked about the Porsche design. Improving an original idea is far easier than creating the original idea.
Interesting they sales pitch that tesla looks antiquated with the strings, but when they looked at the many wires in the stator spaces they conceded that does reduce border effect or whatever term they used. Larger wire has more border effect. The only thing that rubs me wrong on these kind of videos, like the Munro videos, is it is one sided. They need to have a Porsche research engineer and one from Tesla to counter. It’s pretty easy to have a monologue come out favorably when you are the only one talking.
I’m sure Porsche and Tesla would have had a response or two.

 

A percent here, a percent there, repeated many times over, ends up amounting to quite a bit. That is how most modern traditionally-powered cars got so much more efficient than what we were driving a half century ago.

In regular EV mode, this might add only a single increment. But in hybrids with both generator and motor, that becomes two increments, though only partial in Toyota's system because quite a bit of the power doesn't take an electrical path. Other hybrid architectures might get more boost.

Then when looking at regeneration in both EVs and Hybrids, add two more increments, one for each energy flow direction.

 

They didn't say Porsche was using a loom like theirs. They were saying the appearance and weave consistency was the same, but only on the one side. Porsche, and Toyota, is using a hairpin method that needs all those welds on the other side. Doing that adds to manufacturing time and costs. The Munro video said the Lucid motor is one of the cheapest per kW produced to make.

Yes, the continuous weave is an improvement on hairpin. Just like hairpin with square wires is just an improvement over bundles of round wires. It is all just steps of improvement going back to the first motor, and that was just an improvement over spinning a wire in a ball of mercury.

We can shrug off what Lucid did as just improving upon preceding designs, but they did do that while no one else did it.

Which is why they use smaller square wires. Lucid thinks thinks they are the only ones that have 8 wires stacked in each stator well. The Porsche motor had 4, and it looks like it is 4 in the Prius motor.

Munro ultimately wants to sell the report of their tear down, and the competitors already know about their product. Munro isn't selling the components is question, so there is no incentive for them to not be truthful in what they found and their impressions. Search, and you might find videos of theirs doing the others motors.

Then Tesla and Porsche are free to make their own such videos. Otherwise, you are saying Toyota should have had Hyundai and GM at their public event revealing new engines or whatever.

The praise I saw for the Lucid video wasn't for their coverage of their product, but for the primer sections where they went over motor operation and design theory.

 

If there were Porsche and Tesla engineers over their products, it would be better to hear what they say why they do what they do. It isn’t that hard to criticize someone else’s work when they aren’t present, some people are good at that.

 

Then find video of Porsche and Tesla doing so for comparison. I doubt anybody expected Lucid to be objective of the others.

Was anything that Lucid said about their product grossly wrong or misleading? Do the details shown not contribute to the motor's efficiency?

 

I don’t think it’s on anyone but Lucid to invite the other makers, since they have the other makers product on a table to pick over. Same with Munro. It doesn’t matter if it seems to us what they say is correct. The other engineers still aren’t there to respond with their knowledge.