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| Protean's hub motors fit into a 18-inch hub and each makes as much power as a 1.6 petrol engine. |
LOVERS of cars designed with long hoods in which to hide engines
will soon be able to use all that wasted space as a second boot, as we did in
rear-engined cars like the Porsche and VW Beetle.
For after a group of Swiss students’ little electric car last month
recorded a 0 to 100 km acceleration in 1,513 seconds over a distance of less
than 30 metres on four hub-wheels, there is a lot of interest in these bolt-on
rolling engines.
And with governments around the world now either subsidising zero
emission, banning diesel or legislating engines that achieve at least
5 l/100 km, there is also a huge market for hub-wheels, with China alone looking
to equip five million new energy vehicles by 2020.
Michelin is just one of the wheel makers that hope to supply to
this market, with a hub-wheel motor that it first launched as far back as 2010,
but it will be blasted out of the water by Protean Electric, the company that is
set to become the world’s largest supplier of hub-wheel motors for cars, sport
utility vehicles and bakkies.
Protean last week received $70 million in funding to make a range
of in-wheel motors at a new plant in Tianjin in China.
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| The Grimsel |
While Protean’s in-wheel current motor is not nearly as strong as
the 150 kW and 1 700 Nm hub wheels that powered the Grimsel, it does make half
this power, converting the electricity directly into power and eliminating the
energy waste in power transmission.
Suitable for both passenger and commercial vehicles, Protean motors
do not use side shafts or differentials, which can boost an electrified
vehicle’s energy efficiency by up to 15% compared to a centralised motor in an
electric power train.
Protean Electric designs, develops and manufactures Protean Drive
in-wheel motors, a fully integrated in-wheel drive solution.
Using a scalable and patented sub-motor architecture, and designed
to fit inside an 18-inch wheel rim, Protean’s current PD18 product provides the
power and torque required to propel hybrid and electric vehicles from C-segment
all the way to light commercial categories.
Features of Protean’s in-wheel motors include:
• 75 kW peak power;
• the highest torque density of any of today’s
leading electric drive systems;
• a mass of only 34 kg per motor;
• power and control electronics packaged inside
the motor;
• superior regenerative braking capabilities,
which allow up to 85% of the available kinetic energy to be recovered during
braking; and
• it fits within a conventional 18-inch road
wheel.
