Inventive "Donut Motor" 15.KW @ 8.KG scooter motor?

[bumpyrider]

What is this mechanism?




The company is at CES 2025 so there will be videos of their stand.

Heres a sales blurb video, FFWD to 3:50 (to avoid tedium).

 

[Az.]

What is power and torque density?

 

[dominik h]

Even more interesting 150kW 17" with 21kg

 

[bumpyrider]

What is power and torque density?

It's vague info perhaps it's peak figures, it's in wheelie range, 2kw/kg and NM is relative to peak rpm. For the moment Its just a good sales video, no technical info there?

 

[Az.]

For the moment Its just a good sales video, no technical info there?

It is a big guy in a hat talking who didn't show a single motor. Power and torque are determined by controller and battery anyway.

 

[bumpyrider]

They are at CES 2025 so we will see videos of their stand and QnAs, i added some inside view photos.

 

[rafalg]

Is it really possible to have direct electric drive (no gearing) that is efficient at every speed? Of course i agree with the opinion that it's not so great idea to put the motor in car wheels. And they aren't exactly donuts, what's the advantage of the hole inside?

 

[PaPaSteve]

Donut Platform - Redefining Electric Mobility

Redefining Electric Mobility Across All Industries. World's First Complete Electric Vehicle (EV) Hardware Platform With Unified Software.

www.donutlab.com

Not exactly vaporware as the Verge motorcycle is in production.

Experience Life on the Verge - Verge Motorcycles

Pioneering manufacturer of fully electric motorcycles. Discover the thrill and configure your superbike today!

www.vergemotorcycles.com

Well actually . . . the Verge is taking deposits and estimated delivery . . . so maybe is vaporware.

 

[bumpyrider]

If a company has no demo videos of it's key technology in the lab from which it claims world leadership then the company is phoney. They sell by cohersion to naive trade show and phone victims. 2 seconds zero to 60 in invisible toy car which they threw across the room, same here.

 

[JRP3]

Verge tested

We test the baffling hubless Verge TS Pro electric motorbike

The Verge TS is anything but cheap, but it does feature cutting-edge technology.

arstechnica.com

 

[neptronix]

Recent video about the donut

Makes me think about how awesome a bike rim shaped motor could be; think about how much torque you'd get out of 2x the diameter of a regular hub... and theoretically get a power to weight ratio increase while you're at it.

 

[neptronix]

What would be really impressive is if they could make it water proof, unlike basically every hub motor out there..
..which is made more important because the motor is sitting lower to the ground.. seems like a tall order..

 

[amberwolf]

As long as they pot the corrodable parts, and use bearings that are either "sealed" or lubricant packed or "uncorrodable" then I'd guess the primary problem to worry about is particle ingress along with the water that cause wear on surface (including where they builds up, and produce wear on surfaces that normally wouldn't touch each other).


Based on the recent thread of the Reevo ebike failure, where the hubless wheel design and/or manufacture was so bad that it was reported to not even freely spin 1/2 turn from a manual spin offground, other potential issues include bearing design that must be very low friction, since they are so much larger with presumably much more contacting surface area than ones at a hub/axle interface.

 

[neptronix]

Yeah, imagine that the motor is bike rim diameter, with a rim on it, then spoked to a normal hub though.

Goofy axle-less technology isn't mandatory to build a motor like this. Agree that the Reevo is a total fail.

 

[JRP3]

Electric Viking is mostly clickbait garbage and he often gets technical facts completely wrong, I don't waste time watching him any more. The BS title alone says it all: "Worlds most powerful EV motor weighs 41kG"

 

[Chalo]

As long as they pot the corrodable parts, and use bearings that are either "sealed" or lubricant packed or "uncorrodable" then I'd guess the primary problem to worry about is particle ingress along with the water that cause wear on surface (including where they builds up, and produce wear on surfaces that normally wouldn't touch each other).

Hubless wheels are usually constructed like a cylindrical conveyor belt, with a number of rollers supporting the hoop that holds the tire. That makes problems when anything is out of round (which we saw in the video after Seth hit a tiny bump on a ped bridge), and it can be noisy and draggy if everything isn't perfectly smooth and dimensionally true.

In principle, it doesn't have to be any different than a stub axle wheel with a grotesquely oversized diameter. However, that is predicated on having a very stiff and strong (therefore heavy and/or expensive) rim and humongous bearings that may or may not be especially heavy but are definitely expensive.

In that instance, it's not actually a hubless wheel, but rather a regular wheel with a very large hub and axle. But it would have some of the same shortcomings in terms of expense, relative fragility, weight inefficiency, and maintenance difficulty.

The optimized solution for hub motors is what large diameter direct drive hubs already use, with a spoke supported stator fixed to the axle, and a side cover supported rotor turning on smallish axle bearings, with only enough surplus diameter to accommodate a cable conduit.

 

[mxlemming]

Shall we break this motor down for what it really is, succinctly...

Its a hub motor like any other but with an enormous bearing and a lot of outright marketing lies.

In the end, it's a hub motor and will hit the same reality as every other hub motor. There, done.

It might be an srm so avoid the free spin losses at low power, but that doesn't give it magical torque or avoid copper losses.

 

[scianiac]

In the end, it's a hub motor and will hit the same reality as every other hub motor. There, done.

Exactly what I thought when I first saw all this stuff, I'll admit it could potentially be cooled better than other hub motor constructions but I'm not sure that is the best solution for that problem considering the other issues with the design. I think their power claims are basically cheating peak vs continuous power, like sure most motors can put out much higher power than rated continuously in some ideal conditions but you want a motor that will do it's claimed power in most conditions.

 

[neptronix]

The diameter is awesome and will result in killer efficiency and power in the low to mid RPM bands.
This rim-sized diameter can make the motor superior to a mid drive in pretty much every way. It would be great for an ebike.

The Magic Pie with an external controller and RH212 are truly awesome DDs in mountain climbing scenarios. Moreso the Magic Pie. More diameter, more better!

I need to see an outstanding solution to prevent water and dirt ingress before i'd be willing to buy one though.

 

[bumpyrider]

This rim-sized diameter can make the motor superior to a mid drive in pretty much every way. It would be great for an ebike.

don't know if the weight can lean into bends because of centrifical force. Perhaps Bionx can be compared for hub size? Plus what would the pedals join up to?

 

[Username1]

The optimized solution for hub motors is what large diameter direct drive hubs already use, with a spoke supported stator fixed to the axle, and a side cover supported rotor turning on smallish axle bearings, with only enough surplus diameter to accommodate a cable conduit.

Let's say you made a regular hub motor like you describe but made the diameter almost as large as the rim. Sure you'd get the benefits of the large diameter and simple small bearings but you'd lose the main benefit of the donut motor. That being the highly effective air cooling thanks to the exposed stator and fins.

This isn't possible in a conventional hub motor because if you vent the side covers both the rotor and stator are completely exposed to the elements. The only way I can imagine is putting some kind of seal between the stator support and the side case, allowing cooling below that point but sealing off the coils and magnets from debris. At that point it may not be simpler than the donut motors and their specialty bearings/seals.

 

[amberwolf]

This isn't possible in a conventional hub motor because if you vent the side covers both the rotor and stator are completely exposed to the elements.

There's various people here (including Cowardlyduck, IIRC) who have long-term run hubmotors with not only vented side covers, but actually fans inside the stator to draw air thru them, and debris hasn't been the issue one would expect.

I have lots of flinty dust and metal road debris here, and have not seen the kind of mess inside the few vented hubmotors I've tried out that I would have expected from that. Given the stuff I regularly see stuck in my tires, and when the road is wet sometimes splashed and stuck on the sides or bottom of the trike (or CrazyBike2 when I used that), I was certain that I'd end up with stuff like the steel-belted-tire metal bits (that are all over the road edges (where bikes ride) on high-traffic roads) ingested and being ground up between magnets and stator....but, it didn't happen. :?


Others have run low-mounted aircooled non-hubmotors with no filtering on the air intakes, and also not had the kind of mess I'd expect in there over time.


Might be worse in offroad usage, muddy conditions, etc., but it turns out to generally be not nearly the problme that was expected.