its very orange — Mercedes-Benz showcases axial flux EV motor in One-Eleven concept car The new electric motor is a third the size and mass of a conventional EV motor.
Jonathan M. Gitlin – Jun 15, 2023 2:00 pm UTC Enlarge / Formula 1 battery tech and light, compact, but powerful electric motors would power the Mercedes-Benz Vision One-Eleven.Jonathan Gitlin reader comments 0 with Mercedes-Benz provided a flight from DC to San Diego and a return from Los Angeles, plus four nights’ hotels so we could meet the Vision One-Eleven as well as drive a new Mercedes-AMG plug-in hybrid and a new battery electric vehicle. You’ll be able to read those first-drive reports on June 27 and July 11. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
CARLSBAD, CALIF.In 1969, a couple of short months after humans first walked on the surface of the moon, Mercedes-Benz debuted a revolutionary new concept car at that year’s Frankfurt auto show. Called the C111, this orange-and-black coupe featured dramatic gullwing doors but also served as a testbed for new technology, including a four-rotor Wankel rotary engine. Now, 54 years later, it has drawn inspiration from that car for its newest concept, the Vision One-Eleven. It, too, is orange, and it also showcases new technologyin this case very small and lightweight axial flux electric motors.
Axial flux motors aren’t exactly newmost optical drives use them, for example, but they’re not very common in automotive applications. The one-off Jeep Magneto used axial flux motors, as do production hybrid supercars from Acura, McLaren, and Ferrari. In the case of the Italian OEM, it sources the motors from Yasa, a British company that was acquired by Mercedes in 2021. Advertisement
Like the much more common radial flux motor, an axial flux motor uses magnets (in this case, permanent magnets), soft iron to transport the flux, copper as the material that’s connected to the inverter, and an aluminum housing. An exploded diagram of an axial flux electric motor (right) and a radial flux electric motor (left). Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 battery tech and light, compact, but powerful electric motors would power the Mercedes-Benz Vision One-Eleven. Mercedes-Benz
“However, that’s where the similarity ends,” said Tim Woolmer, who founded Yasa in 2009 to commercialize his PhD research. “So in a radial flux machine, the flux travels out from the permanent magnets into the stator, around the stator yoke and then it drops back into the rotor forming a loop. So the flux in the airgap is traveling radially, hence the name “radial flux machine,” he explained.
“On the axial flux machine with two discs and one stator, the flux in this case basically travels from rotor to rotor straight through the stator, then travels around the back steel in the rotor and then back again through the stator through a different coil,” Woolmer said. Page: 1 2 3 Next → reader comments 0 with Jonathan M. Gitlin Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Related Stories Today on Ars