Looks breaky
It accomplishes nothing except replacing the cv joints with something that is more expensive, higher friction and incredibly difficult to keep the dirt out of, even with a corrugated boot.
The motor is still in the same location. It also puts a tremendous amount of stress on the inboard bearings. It’s a shaft sticking out on a pole. That means thicker heavier inboard bearings. More weight, more friction.
It also can’t be used on steer wheels.
An exercise in over-engineering.
The efficiency lost through those gears, the heat that hub will need to dissipate into an area already struggling to dissipate heat from the brakes (regenerative braking isn’t always available, engineers need to plan for that in sizing the brakes even on an EV), plus the sealing issues of a shaft slide around, and the increased unsprung mass is going to kill this before it gets off the ground.
“One key component in ICE vehicles, however, has remained relatively the same in the leap to EVs – the drivetrain.”
Really? Moving from a manual gearbox and clutch or auto + torque converter to a simple reduction gear is ‘relatively the same’. I don’t think so.
How do you keep it :
- Lubricated?
- Sealed against water/dust contamination?
Put it in a rubber boot like normal cv joints?
CV joints don’t work on up and down motion, they are only good for change of angle.
They filed patents - just to be sure - and made a feasibility study in a computer. The end. I’d wager we’ll never see this in any car anytime soon.
If it’s reliable, that is really quite cool.
I get what this is trying to accomplish but the result seems like all the downsides of a hub motor and an axle mounted motor with the only upside being slight potential weight savings and slight packaging space efficiency gains. I could see this having some uses for oddball industrial equipment but I will be very surprised if this even makes it onto a concept car.
For those of us not mechanically inclined, can someone explain what this means like we’re a five-year-old?
Unsprung weight isn’t an issue for passenger vehicles because tyres and suspension are a very small percentage of the vehicles weight.
Hub reduction has been successfully used for over 100 years. It is relatively common in off road military vehicles.
The only thing Hyundai and Kia are revolutionizing is how to stay a virgin till you’re 45 and get your car hijacked with a USB drive.
What about the motor inside the wheel … ?