Finland's Verge Motorcycles, maker of an advanced electric motorcycle, has spun off a company called Donut Lab, which is making hub motors for electric vehicles.
The Finland-based company’s in-wheel motor serves up 650 kilowatts of power
Eliminating the entire drivetrain is the benefit. That’s a ton of complicated heavy wear parts you immediately don’t have to worry about. Even if you take more wear on the motor, fixing that would be as simple as just swapping out a wheel.
On the other hand every time you need to replace a wheel (one of the most easily damaged parts of your car) you’re probably shelling out a quarter of a car in cost.
On the other, other hand, the cost of manufacturing the car just went down by ~60% (cost of parts) assuming they can make these somewhat conparable to the price of a tire. If they can match the price of a tire it went down by a shitload more
I don’t think there’s any practical way for that to happen and I expect you’d want to put tires over top of these anyway. Which will themselves be very expensive because they won’t be able to mount regular tires on them.
I’m sure they can design it in a way to work with existing tires. But I’m also sure there’s zero chance replacing these wheels will be anywhere near cheap.
Eliminating the entire drivetrain is the benefit. That’s a ton of complicated heavy wear parts you immediately don’t have to worry about. Even if you take more wear on the motor, fixing that would be as simple as just swapping out a wheel.
I mean you effectively just eliminated 75-90% of the car
On the other hand every time you need to replace a wheel (one of the most easily damaged parts of your car) you’re probably shelling out a quarter of a car in cost.
On the other, other hand, the cost of manufacturing the car just went down by ~60% (cost of parts) assuming they can make these somewhat conparable to the price of a tire. If they can match the price of a tire it went down by a shitload more
I don’t think there’s any practical way for that to happen and I expect you’d want to put tires over top of these anyway. Which will themselves be very expensive because they won’t be able to mount regular tires on them.
I’m sure they can design it in a way to work with existing tires. But I’m also sure there’s zero chance replacing these wheels will be anywhere near cheap.