29th Sep 2023
DG Innovate, a world leader in the development of ground-breaking technologies for electric vehicle drive systems, has announced a significant breakthrough in its M-TORX project, which is the company’s quest to develop an EV motor that offers performance and efficiency comparable with existing designs, but uses no permanent magnets. While the M-TORX design is still at an advanced stage of simulation, initial results have convincingly shown that it will readily deliver 85% of the performance of a permanent magnet motor and that there is significant scope for refinements that will further improve this already impressive figure.
“This a very important achievement,” said Martin Boughtwood, M-TORX project leader and DGI’s CTO, “as there has been much concern about the availability of the rare earth materials used in the permanent magnets of today’s EV motors, and also about the environmental and political issues related to sourcing these materials. Our M-TORX motor eliminates these problems while also opening the way for EV motors which have all of their component parts manufactured in the UK. This is better for the economy, better for the planet and ultimately better for vehicle owners who will enjoy lower prices.”
The revolutionary new M-TORX magnet-less motors are based on DGI’s proven yet innovative Pareta® architecture, permanent magnet versions of which were conceived to satisfy the demanding requirements of military and heavy commercial applications. A key feature of the Pareta® architecture is that it effectively splits the torque-producing elements of the motor into a large number of segments. Each segment, of which there are typically 24 in a medium-sized motor, is individually controlled by its own inverter integrated within the motor.
This arrangement reduces losses significantly, allows the use of smaller, less expensive power semiconductors in the inverter and means that, if required, the motor can be conveniently powered from a lower voltage supply. Further benefits include exceptionally high power density, which is way ahead of conventional EV motor/inverter systems, and outstanding fault tolerance because if any segment or its associated inverter fails, the remaining segments are unaffected. This allows the motor to continue operating normally, albeit with a slight loss in performance.
“Our M-TORX motors will share all the benefits of the Pareta® architecture currently embodied in our permanent magnet machines,” said Martin Boughtwood. “In fact, they will use the same standardised housing and shaft system into which we will drop an alternative magnetic structure to achieve optimised magnet-less performance in what is essentially the same package. With the latest very encouraging results from our advanced modelling and simulation systems, we expect to be able to demonstrate M-TORX prototypes by the end of the year.”
