Saietta Group, a UK-based motor design and manufacturing company, is showing off its AFT 140 in-wheel electric motor technology with a prototype skateboard architecture.
The motors use an axial-flux orientation like the McLaren Artura. The construction makes the motor wider and flatter, meaning that it can fit almost entirely within the wheel of a road vehicle. Acting as both the motor and the brake, the four-wheel-drive setup moves the motors off the skateboard.
The current class of EVs uses radial flux motors, which have their own advantages, but tend not to fit inside a wheel very easily. Saietta’s solution creates a perfectly flat floor with minimal intrusion into the platform.
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“Moving the powertrain fully into the wheels,” writes Saietta, “maximizes the usable space above the chassis for the primary purpose of the vehicle such as transporting people or cargo, selling products in a mobile shop or collecting refuse.”
The motors are designed to work at low voltage to make them safer and would be perfect, the company says, for low-speed vehicles that mostly stay in the city like, for example, autonomous pods, people carriers or last-mile delivery vans.
“Saietta is all about high-tech, real-world, application-ready electric drive technology,” says Wicher Kist, CEO of Saietta. “Now is the time to have a serious industry discussion about the potential of in-wheel electric motors in making congested city centers quieter and cleaner spaces.”
Saietta is not the first company to come up with the in-wheel motor concept. Lordstown Motors’ upcoming Endurance pickup truck also utilizes the same layout.
Unlike Lordstown Motors, though, Saietta does not plan on building any vehicles of its own but instead wants to sell this technology to other manufacturers to utilize in their electric vehicles.
