A Comprehensive Benchmark of Different Motor Topologies for High-Performance 2-Wheelers Application

Electric 2 or 3 wheelers market is booming, so that today most of in-wheel 2–3 wheelers are equipped with the state-of the-art outer rotor permanent magnet motors that do not present best attributes for sustainable development, especially because of their CO2 impact. With the aim of evaluating various technologies for innovative in-wheel architecture where electrical machines in the range of 50 kW to 100 kW are being manufactured, we present a comparative study between the state-of-the-art electrical machine topology of single outer rotor permanent magnet machine and alternative novel solutions. The comparison is made considering attributes of cost, sustainability, weight and performance. Different electrical machine topologies discussed in this paper are outer rotor permanent magnet machines, axial flux permanent magnet machines, and YEESMA, which is an axial flux electrically excited synchronous machine. This study is carried out on a 75 kW, 1000 Nm electrical machine, however, the results of this paper and conclusion made may be extended also to other power levels in this segment or even serve as an illustration for other 2− & 3− wheeler segments.