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  • I'm curious as to the efficiency of the motor (basically, how much of the input electric power is converted to motive power).

    If it isn't very good, then it might be excellent for drag races, but maybe not so many others.

    Also, any power that doesn't turn into torque, is likely to be expressed as heat.

    by ChrisMarshallNY
  • There was a video on this motor recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4OdH0ibOBk made by a phd in the field
    by alex_duf
  • Ok so whats the catch with the technology? Its more powerful, smaller, all readily available materials. Some kind of strange shape, longevity challenge? Difficult to make so costs are tough to bring down?

    Just noticed that they are owned by mercedes benz- they will kill it accidentally. Corporate wont be able to roll it out. They will try and capture all the value and kill its potential

    by boringg
  • The questions I have mostly centre around how much precision of power delivery it has - it is an all or nothing proposition, can it deliver 0.1% smoothly for real world use, and what is the MTBF / duty cycle / failure mode? I would imagine the last thing anyone would want is a locked wheel, or only one wheel delivering that much power. I know this is unlikely, but as someone with a 22-year-old ICE vehicle I do tend to take the long view on these things and want to know how they will fail as much as how they work. Same applies to the Tesla motors - is there much information on failure modes publicly available?
    by antonyh
  • The new YASA axial flux motor weighs just 28 pounds, or about the same as a small dog.

    But how many footballs a small dog weighs?

    by varjag
  • This discussion is all about vehicles with large batteries, but how about hybrids? With light enough and efficient enough motors, all kinds of designs might become practical:

    - Toyota-style hybrid drives could be a lot lighter, and they don’t need large batteries.

    - e-bikes with tiny batteries?

    - Hybrid aircraft? What if there was a battery large enough for takeoff and landing, a small motor (or pair for redundancy) for cruising and to recharge the battery, and motors and fans or propellers wherever is best from an aerodynamic perspective.

    - Power tools.

    by amluto
  • A link to the press release https://yasa.com/news/yasa-smashes-own-unofficial-power-dens...
    by chris_overseas
  • Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's, because 1/4 of the motor weight means better power-to-weight ratio... a lot of things will automatically get better.

    YASA was founded in 2009, a spin out from Oxford University following the PhD of founder and still CTO, Dr Tim Woolmer.

    "Over the decades that followed both of these technologies were explored. But despite the potential for weight reduction, smaller size, shorter axle length and increased torque, it was the difficulty in manufacturing the axial flux technology that limited its commercial viability, because the motor could not be made by stacking laminations, as with radial machines."

    "The breakthrough innovation came by segmenting the axial flux motor in discrete "pole-pieces", so the motor could be manufactured using Soft Magnetic Composite material.

    SMC can be pressed at low cost into a wide variety of 3D shapes. This removed the need for the complex laminations, overcoming the major manufacturing challenge of the axial flux machine."

    "In 2025, after a £12m investment, YASA opened the UK's first axial-flux super factory, in Oxfordshire.

    The opening of this facility boosts YASA’s manufacturing capacity, setting new benchmarks in e-motor technology and quality, and enabling production to scale beyond 25,000 units per year."

    This is awesome. Lighter motors also make electric flight more viable

    by davedx

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