Australian-designed Motor Could Improve EV Driving Range

A group of engineers from the University of New South Wales have designed a high-speed motor that can potentially increase the range of electric vehicles, reports the Australasian Fleet Management Association (AfMA).

Inspired by the shape of the longest railroad bridge in South Korea, the new Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (IPMSM) has achieved test speeds of 100,000 revolutions per minute, making it the world’s fastest IPMSM ever built with commercialized lamination materials.

In addition, according to researchers, the motor can produce a very high-power density, an advantage for EVs in reducing overall weight and increasing the range for any given charge.

“One of the trends for electric vehicles is for them to have motors which rotate at higher speeds,” says Dr Guoyu Chu, a project team leader. “Every EV manufacturer is trying to develop high-speed motors and the reason is that the nature of the law of physics then allows you to shrink the size of that machine. And with a smaller machine, it weighs less and consumes less energy and therefore that gives the vehicle a longer range.”

For an electric vehicle motor, the speed would be reduced, increasing its power. “We can scale and optimize to provide power and speed in a given range – for example, a 200kW motor with a maximum speed of around 18,000 rpm that perfectly suits EV applications,” Chu explains.

The researchers believe that the motor can be ready for commercial use in less than a year. “If an electric vehicle manufacturer, like Tesla, wanted to use this motor then I believe it would only take around six to 12 months to modify it based on their specifications,” says Chu.

Other potential uses for the new motor are large heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, high-precision computer numeric control (CNC) machines used in aviation and robotics, and integrated drive generators used in aircraft systems.