2014 Chevy Spark 100Kw Permanent Magnet Motor

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Sep 5, 2013
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ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA 94501
It will be nice to find a 2014 Chevy Spark 100Kw permanent magnet motor and differential in the wrecking yard. I would like to use this in a Porsche Spyder kit car. It would really simplify the build.
The Spark EV has a 0-60 mph time of just 7.6 seconds, and up to 400 pound-feet of torque on tap from its 105-kW electric motor system. It has a 21-kWh battery. One can only imagine the ride in a Spyder weighing a 1/3 of the weight of the Spark, using this motor.








 
Some more info:

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/6557-Chevrolet-Spark-EV/page25
The Spark EV motor is designed and manufactured by GM. This motor makes 540 Nm (402 ftlbf) of Torque at stall and out to about 2000 rpm.
“The very high torque is motor performance that we are very proud of, and customers will notice the difference: (It has a gear reduction of 3.18 to 1, so the axle torque is the product of these two). This is a very low numerical reduction ratio, which has several great benefits – 1) Feels much better to drive. 3.18:1 is less than half of the reduction of all other EVs. This makes for extraordinary low driveline inertia, less than 1/5 of the driveline inertia of the Nissan Leaf and 1/4 that of the Fiat 500 EV. Their cars feel like you are driving around in second gear all day long; ours feels like fourth gear. 2) Lower gear mesh, spinning losses, and lower high speed electromagnetic losses mean very high drive unit efficiency. The Spark EV efficiency from DC current to delivered Wheel torque is 85% averaged over the city driving schedule and 92% when averaged over the highway schedule. This is the highest in the industry, and that is one of the reasons why the Spark EV sets the benchmark for most efficient car.”

Spark EV: 400 ft lbs * 3.18 gear reduction = 1272ft/lbs for 3000 pound car
Model S 60: 325 ft lbs * 9.73 gear reduction = 3162ft/lbs for 4600 pound car

Permanent magnet electric motors pretty much consist of three primary materials: copper, steel, and the magnets, the latter made of rare earth elements. The Spark e-motor is no different. It's how they are arranged that would seem to set this motor apart, as well as the processes used to assemble each that are designed to minimize waste.

For example, the copper coils are fabricated using square wire that is cut, trimmed and bent by robots into the "hair pin" shapes required to create the windings. Savagian explained that using square wire is a more efficient use of space. While it takes an experienced technician 15-minutes to manually insert each of the 120+ copper 'hair pins' into their insulating wrappers in the motor, after that robots continue the assembly process, from seating the pins in the stator to welding the free ends into a continuous coil, to dripping the insulating vanish and epoxy onto the newly welded ends. This last step of dripping, instead of dipping, the exposed ends of the coil into their respective coating baths cuts production time and waste.

The magic of the Spark motor, however, starts to become obvious once you see how the rotor is assembled. This is where the tiny, Chiclet-sized rare earth magnets are mounted. There are two sizes of them and they are positioned at various angles to the radius of the rotor. But what's intriguing isn't so much the magnet themselves, but the how they are spaced and the tiny 'eyebrows' and pinholes that are part of the rotor assembly. These aren't there as an after-thought or by-product of a sloppy manufacturing process. They have a very precise purpose, as Peter Savagian illustrated using my luncheon paper napkin.

The Spark motor is a three-phase motor, meaning it has three overlapping sin waves in its power flow, the purpose being to smooth out the operation of the motor as it spins. But within in these sin waves are small peaks and troughs. The purpose of the air gaps in the form of the 'eyebrows' around the slots into which the magnets are epoxied, and the even smaller pin holes closer to the outside of the rotor are to reduce these peaks and valleys, directing the magnetic flux fields in such a way as to further quiet the motor and smooth out its operation.

image.img.maxw_276.jpg

image.img.maxw_276.jpg


So I drove a Spark EV today.
I have mixed feelings about the car. It's obviously tiny with a ridiculously small trunk. But the thing that really disappointed me the most was its handling under acceleration. The motor is indeed nice and peppy - but with the heavy batteries in the rear and the shift of the CG when accelerating, the front wheels get really light and especially on a wet road (I'm in Oregon, it was pouring rain today) the car gets really squirrely. Not a good feeling.
Add to that the fact that they went with the "break pedal triggers 'real' regen" (go-pedal only does a max of about 8-9kW), the Spark EV doesn't give me the wonderful single pedal driving experience that I learned to love so much in my Model S.

While the Fiat 500 and the Leaf are RPMing like crazy from launch, the SparkEV 'torques' off the line and @41.5 mph is just entering its efficiency range. This is what the 3.2 final ratio means, vs ~8.0 for the buzz-bombs. Major coup for GM designers and for drivers, a whole new approach. Can't wait to drive one. Should be more Tesla-like.

The Chevrolet Spark, originally branded prominently as the Daewoo Matiz, is a city car produced by the South Korean automaker GM Korea, marketed worldwide since 1998 when it replaced the Daewoo Tico. The Matiz was originally designed by Italdesign Giugiaro and has been available solely as a five-door hatchback. The second generation model was introduced in 2005, with the third generation launched in 2010. All generations of the car have been sold under both Daewoo and various General Motors brands, and have been manufactured and marketed under license agreements by local automakers in several countries.
 
These are awesome motors that take advantage of reluctance for massive torque

now only if gm would get their head out of there ass and stick two of them in an awd all alumnium truck before ford does

I cant wait for the full size full electric truck battle of the future
Imagine being a contractor and having a genset where ever you go
Charge all ur tools
Real 4wd with no silly axels so you can slam it with air bags for the freeway and loading/unloading

or lift it for rock crawling without changing the camber

Cant believe how stupid gm management is
 
NOT induction its a PMAC. On that not the leaf motors are easy to get I got one :)
 
Arlo1 said:
NOT induction its a PMAC.

That picture says 2013 Chevrolet Spark EV electric motor and shows aluminum bars in the laminated steel rotor core. That makes it an induction motor, doesn't it?
 
major said:
Arlo1 said:
NOT induction its a PMAC.

That picture says 2013 Chevrolet Spark EV electric motor and shows aluminum bars in the laminated steel rotor core. That makes it an induction motor, doesn't it?
Isn't that the same motor as the first picture with the magnets in it?
 
Arlo1 said:
major said:
Arlo1 said:
NOT induction its a PMAC.

That picture says 2013 Chevrolet Spark EV electric motor and shows aluminum bars in the laminated steel rotor core. That makes it an induction motor, doesn't it?
Isn't that the same motor as the first picture with the magnets in it?

I see a difference between the first two images that bigmoose posted. Both depict a bar wound stator. The first shows an IPM rotor. The second image shows an induction motor rotor. See the difference?
 
major said:
I see a difference between the first two images that bigmoose posted. Both depict a bar wound stator. The first shows an IPM rotor. The second image shows an induction motor rotor. See the difference?
Yes I did but I thought it was just different pictures of the same thing showing different amounts of info.
 
http://gm-volt.com/2011/05/02/remy-ev-motor-reduces-dependence-on-foreign-rare-earth-supplies/

in the above article they are talking about the same motor (i believe) and how they can 'swap' the PM rotor for an induction rotor and get the same performance and efficiency. sounds interesting to me!
 
More very good stuff. As you know from my postings I am an avid believer in oil cooling, and lean towards the induction motor for higher volume applications. The cornering of rare earths by China is a real and significant strategic issue. The chart at the end "lets the cat out of the bag" and explains why GM went with the low RPM operating point and gearing for the motor. They are operating it in the performance range where the induction rotor is equal to or better than the permanent magnet rotor. Up at high speeds, and high gear reduction ratio's, the permanent magnet motor shines. The lower speed motor saves on silicon costs too (maximum commutation speed.)

“And the solution is the induction motor. The humble induction motor has been around for a very, very long time, since Nicola Tesla discovered it many, many, many decades ago,” Worley said. “I’m going to talk a little bit about the winding technology we use in our machines. What we call the High Voltage Hairpin, or HVH winding.”

In contrast to conventional roundwire windings, the HVH™ stator winding uses precision-formed rectangular wires. Multiple layers of interlocking “hairpins” produce a superior slot fill (up to 73 percent vs. 40 percent for typical round-wire windings),” the paper says, “This patented design also creates a shorter end turn space than round-wire stators, thereby reducing heat and improving the motor’s torque and power density, and lends itself to robust construction at the critical connections between the conductors. Combined, the high slot fill and shorter end turn space reduce the winding resistance causing less heat generation. The HVH™ windings are well-suited to liquid cooling that further enhances performance and reliability.
This design can be used with either a permanent magnet rotor or AC-induction rotor.
Worley contrasted traditional concentrated stator windings with Remy’s innovation.
“A concentrated winding is great in some applications – doesn’t make a very good induction machine,” Worley said, “Our [HVH] winding has low loss, and we use oil cooling which is good for not only a permanent magnet machine, but also an induction machine. So we’re seeing some of what we already have in our permanent magnet motors translates very nicely over into induction machines.”
He then addressed what he called misconceptions about induction motors.
“The first one is they can’t deliver the same performance,” Worley said. “Well, I’ve just shown here. I’ll explain the graph (see below). It’s quite busy; the dotted lines represent continuous performance from three different machine technologies. The solid lines represent peak performance, so that’s performance for up to 60 seconds. The red lines – the dotted and the solid ones – represent the varied permanent magnet motors.”
Remy3.jpg
Remy1.jpg
View attachment 1

Dotted lines show continuous performance between a permanent magnet motor (red line) and Remy’s AC-induction motors (black=aluminum rotor, yellow=copper rotor). Solid lines represent peak performance of the same. Increasing system voltage (purple arrow) improves the AC-induction motors’ torque and efficiency.

Permanent magnet motors usually outperform induction motors, he said, but not in this case.
“You can see that typically they sit above the black and the yellow lines. The black line would be an induction machine [with HVH winding] with an aluminum rotor, the yellow line being an induction machine with a copper rotor [and HVH winding],” Worley said, “What I’d like to point out to you is over towards the left you can see the induction machines can deliver comparable performance to the permanent magnet machines and of course that’s dependent on a bunch of things including the cooling and electromagnetic design.”
He described how Remy further improved on Nicola Tesla’s design.
“As you move up in speed for the same system voltage, the induction machines deliver less performance than the permanent magnet machines, but that’s the purpose of the purple arrow,” Worley said, “If you increase the system voltage you can get more torque at higher speeds. Now an advantage of induction machines over the PM is you can increase the system voltage. With PM it’s always a concern because of back EMF [electromotive force].”
 
Giovanni LiCalsi said:
Is there an off the shelf motor controller that can be used for Sparky or can the GM controller be used by hacking the Can bus?
I would really like to use this motor.

You can do it using this: http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=gevcu&cat=23
 
Someone sent this to me today:
AC motors are a bit different. it is somewhat difficult to mix and match inverters and motors. THe motors vary in inductance, resistance, the number of poles, the means of reporting angular position, etc. And so while most inverters could run most motors in theory, in practice, inverters have to be "tuned" to each type of motor they are used with. This is termed "characterization".

So yes, the Chevy Spark motor probably only works with the Chevy Spark inverter.

Our GEVCU is designed to control such inverters using the Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol. But the message digest for each inverter is different. And so we would need some form of documentation on the CAN protocol used by GM to control the Chevy Spark inverter. We would also have to get a motor and inverter, set up a test bench and actually write an object module FOR the Spark. It's all non-trivial.

There just aren't enough Sparks on the road ot make it worthwhile yet. If it sells well, and I'm told it is a great little car but only obtainable in California, Oregon and Canada fleet sales as it is a CAFE compliance car. But as more become available if the motors and inverters become common on eBay or through other salvage channels, it might be a thing to do. But it probably isn't worth the time for one at the moment.

If you are a pretty good C++ coder and can get the documentation from GM, we can probably get you fixed up so you could do it. But reverse engineering it would be quite a task.
 
dnmun said:
i think the motor in the back of the lexus 400h hybrid 4 wheel drive is the best choice for a motor. they may be more common in the junkyards too.


It also requires some obnoxiously high voltage for it's piddly 50kW, like 650vdc. That's an awful lot of added design cost and lethal voltage risk to make less power than my bicycle.
 
so im looking to use a spark ev motor in a toyota pickup conversion.
there seems to be limited info on people who have used these motors for diy builds.
im hoping to run the driveshaft direct from the rotor, as rear wheel drive,
anyone have any more info on these motors for diy application?
 
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