Engineers have been making efforts since long to bring about something that could optimize the range-related problems of electric vehicles in an efficient and economical way. After years of analysis, researchers at the University of New South Wales Sydney have come up with a new electric motor that can effectively reduce the range anxiety of battery-powered vehicles without causing more trouble. The researchers didn’t want to achieve this by increasing the size or weight of the battery pack and this new electric motor has been deemed the most effective approach to cater to all such issues. The newly developed electric motor has the capability to considerably increase the range of EVs without conforming to the weight and size parameters of the battery.
The motor cannot only do 100,000 revolutions per minute but can also help in reducing the weight of the electric vehicles through its high-power density feature, thus ultimately increasing the range. According to the press release by the university, this brand-new electric motor has the capability to increase the range parameters of the EV. Apart from EVs, the motor has a lot of practical applications to be deployed in large heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. When used in such systems, it can also decrease the rate of energy consumption along with reducing weight as well. All of this happens because of its high rate of revolutions per minute.
During its manufacturing process, the researchers at UNSW have incorporated the use of artificial intelligence so that they can better assess and optimize the functional parameters of the electric motor such as checking the thermal tolerance levels, mechanical parts, and the use of electric mobility, etc. Hence, with the use of AI, the researchers conceived 90 designs based on the selected characteristics and then shortlisted the top 50% from them in order to formulate new designs. The whole process was repeated until they got one such design that fulfilled their expected criteria. The end product was a 120th-generation electric motor having a peak power density of 7kW per kilogram.
Guoyu Chu, who is a post-doctoral researcher and also contributed to the research project, stated, “For an electric vehicle motor, we would actually reduce the speed somewhat, but that also increases its power. We can scale and optimize to provide power and speed in a given range – for example, a 200kW motor with a maximum speed of around 18,000 rpm that perfectly suits EV applications.” “If an electric vehicle manufacturer, like Tesla, wanted to use this motor, then I believe it would only take around six to 12 months to modify it based on their specifications”, he added.
