[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Expand the thinking from the wheel to the wheel/suspension/axle subsystem:


https://press.zf.com/press/en/media/media_2144.html

Originally Posted by freebeard

Putting the motor on a swing-arm allows for a gearing reduction and reduced the unsprung weight. The downside is that it doesn't fit inside the wheel, although it's not as bad as a central motor with driveshafts.

Originally Posted by aerohead

I'll take a stab. There might be an overall advantage,minimizing un-sprung weight,by moving the mass of the motor(s) inboard.
The hub-motor would make for a rather large pendulum,with increased stresses imparted to all the suspension components,plus chassis attachment hard-points,requiring more massive parts and adding to overall weight,all mitigated if this mass is re-directed inboard.
Oilpan4's comment about a wash-boarded road evokes visions of a torture chamber for bushings,springs, dampeners,and chassis.
I tore a shock tower off my VW bus on the Kananaskis Trail in Canada.

Good old circular reasoning.
Then it's not a hub motor.
At that point you might as well use a smaller, higher speed more and a gear box exactly like my Nissan leaf, or 2 or 4 of them.

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Still I think the problems with hub motors for cars are basically teething problems and once they go into small scale production those will be largely sorted out.

There's lighter magnets and better ways of managing the fields coming these days, so they should be substantially lighter. Doing away with the drive shaft and needing smaller brakes, if at all, also helps. That should reduce the weight issue.

Then the Lightyear team chose relatively small hub motors. 10 seconds to 62 mph is not Tesla territory though adequate for everyday use.
If they can get the motors warranted by their supplier to do the miles then the supplier has a strong incentive to get the hub motors to last. The advantages are immense. Someone needs to sort out the bugs, but then the sky is the limit.

They are already mass produced.
All the major car manufacturers that are electric vehicle early producers have had a crack at hub motor and gave up on them.
I think the only ones that didn't go on about hub motors was tesla.

Oh and I timed my 0 to 60 times on my leaf with my tool bag, cords, evse, spare tire, jack, tire iron, 17ah 30cal ammo can LiFePO4 battery was about 10 seconds.