Electric Vehicle Drives

Improving the efficiency of electric vehicle drives is no easy problem.  The combination of power electronics, motor and mechanics all contribute to the overall efficiency.  Conventional drives, using permanent magnet or separately excited motors have high efficiency, but only over a small range of driving conditions.

We have designed the first of a new generation of cost effective, energy efficient vehicle drives.  By moving to high efficiency induction motors for the motive power it is now possible to have a much broader envelope of maximum efficiency.  By having no fixed fields, these drives are able to create optimum fluxes over a much wider range of speeds and loads.  This is particularly important for vehicles that are constantly accelerating and decelerating, and means that we better able to use the available energy to drive the vehicle, and can recover more when braking.  Our designs are now being produced by our clients and are being used in a variety of zero emissions vehicle applications around the world.