1mo ago

28-pound electric motor delivers 1000 horsepower

Tiny electric motor is as powerful as four Tesla motors put together and outperforms record holder by 40%

Maker website: https://yasa.com/news/yasa-smashes-own-unofficial-power-density-world-record-pushing-state-of-the-art-electric-motor-to-staggering-new-59kw-kg-benchmark/

94 comments

Everything but metric.
- They're based in the UK, they have no excuse.
  
  Likely just the article
- Did they update the page since you commented? I see kw and kg on there... 🤷
  Now latest testing of an even lighter 12.7kg version on a more powerful dynamometer has shattered this record, with a staggering 750kW (>1000bhp) short-term peak rating, resulting in a new unofficial power density record of 59kW/kg
Ah good thing the batteries are not the heavy part of the system otherwise this would be awkward.
- This motor weighs 12.7 kilograms and has 1000hp. How much does a comparable motor weigh?
  
  There is a 1000 hp tesla with 3 motors that all together weights about 450 killograms, this seems to support your idea until you look at how much the batteries weigh...
  The batteries are 550 kilograms to start, and are generally considered to not be big enough. So yeah, great they solved the issue that no EV had (EVs always had lighter motors, and very heavy batteries).
  Edit: The 1000 hp telsa is 2200 Kg total, so yeah this would cut out 400 ish Kgs (assuming cooling and inverter and all that) from the total, not nothing but not really a game changer ether. Also 1000 Hp engine is stupid and not needed, maybe if it was a 200 Hp version but then also that would be diminishing returns as this motor would be what 4 kgs?
I wonder if we'll ever get enough standardization across EVs so people can start doing the electric equivalent of an LS swap.
I could see this being done on a Slate truck, along with an auxiliary EV battery bolted in the back.
- It's more about the batteries than the motor. You can make a motor that sucks down as much power as you want. The battery can't necessarily provide that without damage.
  
  Hopefully solid-state batteries (once their production manages to ramp up to consumer vehicle scale) could allow for higher capacity and power delivery without the limitations or safety risks of current battery tech.
  
  Could power it with a gas turbine 😅
- Like this?
Until someone tests it independently, this should be considered BS.
- I'll give them some credence based on the cars their motors are already used in and the fact that their parent company is Mercedes-Benz. Doesn't look like they're a bunch of grifters seeking investment.
  
  I suppose, but I'm skeptical of car manufacturer claims, too, until independent testing is done.
  I hope this is real and think it's awesome, but will wait to see if they exaggerated.
28 pounds = 12.7kg, for those wondering.
- But, how much is that in baby elephants?
  
  Roughly a tenth of a baby elephant, or around two round trips of your neurons on a single line reaching the moon
1000 hp = 0.75 MW. If 98% efficient that's 15KW of heat dissipation Sounds like a subsystem bigger than the motor.
- Yep, I noticed that, you're right. And that's near-miraculous efficiency. The maker's website sez: "YASA also estimates that its all-important continuous power will be in the region of 350kW-400kW (469bhp-536bhp)." It also sez: "To achieve a 750kW short-term peak rating and a density of 59kW/kg ... " Devi'ls in the details ... The image on the 'superblondie' page shows A LOT of cooling built into whatever metal that is: https://supercarblondie.com/wp-content/uploads/YASA-tiny-electric-motor.webp
  
  Sez. I lol'd
  
  EV motors are already over 90% efficient. They don't piss away evergy as heat like ICE, where about 40% of the gas is wasted as heat and noise.
- I mean an ICE output more heat than power. So a 150kW ice engine requires like, 200kW heat dissipation ?
Anything but metric!
- 1000 horses sounds cooler than 735 electrical pixies a second.
  
  And somehow also more impressive than one Zeus per minute
  
  But horses are measured in hands, average of 16 hands so 16000 hands, 8000 people. That's like 1 electrical pixie per 11 people
- Horsepower is a pretty standard way to advertise things in the automotive industry…
  
  But it should be kilowatts. There's no reason not to use the standard metric for power, it's unnecessary fragmentation of figures
- Well the metric version is about 1014 PS, but honestly the difference between horsepower and pferdestärke is pretty negligible.
  Sadly “745 kW” doesn’t sound as cool as “1000 horsepower.”
cant wait for corporations to crush the competition with some bullshit yet again and then complain that we're at peak EV tech anyway
300-400kW continuously should be the headline. Thats impressive. Lots of motors can try and make 1000hp if you feed them enough voltage but only for a split second before they overheat and burn out. I wonder how long it can do this 1000HP.
Once I figured out it was an axial flux prototype motor this whole article made sense.
- Nerd
I'm gonna slap one on my fixie.
- Having a powerful motor is nice, but you still have to power it.
  
  Easy! Just make this:
  
  With this:
The size is less of an issue than the power usage.
Does it also use 1000% more power to get that strength?
The only real benefit in that case would be robot mech suits.
- I'm assuming the efficiency is similar to other electric motors. Maybe not the best, but likely acceptable. If it's not, the product is DOA.
  If my assumption holds true, it would allow for lighter cars and better packaging by making even more room for the battery near the bottom of the car since these engines are so small, you could easily just use one per driven wheel and forget about differentials and such. And hybrids that put the motor in a ZF 8HP transmission could have wayyyyy more power available from the electric bit, as space is sorta constrained there.
  I think trains could also benefit from a weight loss IF these are durable enough. They have multiple motors usually.
  Weight is important in vehicles not just because of energy efficiency, but because the more sprung mass you have, the more work the suspension needs to do. And unsprung mass is even worse, so ideally your motors are sprung mass. Currently weight is still a bit of an issue for EVs due to the batteries, but if they can make up for it a bit by having super light weight motors, the difference between EV weight and ICE weight becomes smaller. Weight is also super important to road wear, I think it is by 4th power. So 20% heavier means twice as much wear already.
- Weight will help with efficiency. If you got to tow around less weight, you can go for longer.
  
  The weight of the motor is insignificant compared to that of the batteries.
This, in a folding, commuter e-bike.
- guns throttle* Tires and tube liquify, blast apart, rim rapidly grinds to nothing against the pavement, spokes rocket in all directions. Onlookers remark: "pretty cool way to go out..." And then give the 🤘 hand gesture
Hopefully the numbers are correct. The article however is shockingly terribly written.
- These get shit out by LMs at the rate of a dozen a day.
"YASA" sounds like a mashup between YMCA and NASA. Even their logo looks like the Y's.
- YMCA NASA colab would've been lit though
I was going to shit all over this thing, but if it can do ~500hp continuously that's awesome. Wonder what kind of efficiency it has and what the cooling requirements are. That low weight puts us back into unsprung wheel motor territory, especially if it scales down well.
Electric cars are already awesome but they're just getting started. In a few years an ICE car will look like even more of a pathetic fossil (pun intended) than it does today.
So when are we going to see these in trains?
- Trains don't benefit much from lesser weight.
  Drones, and planes are the most likely to benefit from this.
  
  Quite the opposite, you want the locomotive to be as heavy as possible without exceeding axle or track load limits. The heavier it is, the more weight it can pull before slipping the wheels.
  
  Assuming that flying with an electric motor is a viable option (I have zero clue, but from what I heard currently its not that realistic that we will get electric planes)
holy shit
We StRaPpEd MaGnEtS tO rEcLaIm EnErGy!!!w
- Downvoted for alternating case
Ah they're rating motors like they used to rate speakers?
https://www.amazon.ca/Mr-Dj-PSE65BT-Portable-Rechargeable/dp/B078BT8DB4
- Car engines, for probably the past 100 years, have always been advertised based on their peak power rating, not what they can produce continuously. Cars are not designed to have their accelerator pedals floored for hours on end, nor is this even possible to do, as you'd eventually hit a curve and need to slow down.
  This is especially the case for high performance vehicles, which usually have more demanding maintenance requirements just from normal operation, let alone from being abused like that.
  
  "pedals", I beg of you. Please.
- Ah happy days. I've not heard PMPO in so long!
An engine for a third of the price of my weekly shopping trip….thats ace.
/s
The previous version is already in the Temerario. This is more of an evolution of an existing design.

94 comments