> The motor’s performance on the dyno has exceeded even our most optimistic simulations
Not to take away from the exciting achievement, but I always found comments like this kindof unusual. Really, it exceeded even your _most optimistic_ simulations? If the high end of your simulated performance was below what you actually measured, I am worried that your simulation is seriously neglecting something. I used to work in decent depth with three phase bldc motors, so I feel I can say with some authority that these things _can_ be simulated, and while real world data is hard to exactly predict, getting something outside of the predicted range would generally be interpreted as a sign that your simulation isn't so good. But maybe this is just marketing-speak, and their simulations are actually totally fine.
I suspect that the marketing guy's eyes glazed over when the engineers tried to explain confidence intervals to him. He demanded a simple figure. They gave him the median projected value to make him go away. The tested value was above median projection and thus you get this wordspew.
> and while real world data is hard to exactly predict, getting something outside of the predicted range would generally be interpreted as a sign that your simulation isn't so good
or, yasa is moving very quickly,and as they are breaking new ground in power density, the numbers are ridonkulous,completly and utterly insane, 30lb's peak over 1000hp,just having the thing not vaporise itself is an achivement, and so there is no actual way to simulate that, outside of rocket motors, which is kind of where they are at.
bet the tire guys are shaking there heads
> I used to work in decent depth with three phase bldc motors, so I feel I can say with some authority that these things _can_ be simulated
If I take it literally versus hyperbole and excitement, could there be uncertainty coming from the drive train design choices, system integration details?
Sure, but that sort of uncertainty should only increase the range of values you see out of the simulation. You could say “efficiency may range from 60% to 80%, so the output torque will range from X to Y”. If the real result is bigger than Y, something has gone wrong in your modeling or assumptions
I suspect they correctly simulated everything.
Then on the test stand they turned the dial to 11 and saw a number higher than the simulations.
Probably not reliable at that power level, but fine for a record announcement.
Short-term peak ratings for electric motors are always huge. You can put in higher voltages up to arc-over. More interesting is sustained output. 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, continuous duty. That's all about how well it can get rid of heat.
That's why electric motors have a "temperature rise" number on the data plate. That's the steady-state temperature increase from a cold start when run continuously at rated power.
To be fair, in some applications the short-term peak rating is an important metric in its own right. For example, robotics applications frequently will have high peak load, but much lower steady state load. Eg, a jumping robot will briefly need a ton of force when pushing against the ground and when landing, but in the middle there it won't be applying such high loads. Likewise for bringing appendages up to speed, or accelerating a car to some speed, etc.
edit: After looking at your account, I see you are John Nagle, and I worry that I am confidently-incorrect here, lol. I'll leave the comment as-is because it is still my genuine belief, but feel free to correct me if I'm totally off!
There's a series of limitations on peak motor torque. Motors usually hit the thermal limits first, but here are some of the other limits:
A big problem with older permanent magnet motors was that too much current could produce a field strong enough to demagnetize the magnets. Supposedly this is is less of an issue in the cobalt-neodymium magnet era, because the coercivity of those alloys is so high.
Then there's finding a pulsed current source to power the windings. Ultracapacitors are good for that.
Then there's finding big enough semiconductors to switch the thing. This, too, has become much easier. It's amazing how much current you can put through modern power MOSFETs.
Then there are mechanical limitations. At some point, something is going to bend from sheer torque. At some point below that, the windings will distort a little on each cycle and wear out.
Applications for this include railguns, catapults, and electrically launched rollercoasters. Interestingly, they're all linear motors.
(I haven't looked at this since the 1990s. The components needed are now far better and more available. Mostly as a spinoff of the electric car industry.)
> To be fair, in some applications the short-term peak rating is an important metric in its own right.
Cars are a good example of this. There are very few public roads in the world where a car can use 1000hp for more than a few or perhaps a few tests of seconds at a time. On a drag strip a 1000hp street car might run a low 9 second quarter mile reaching around 150mph. That'll put you in jail if a cop sees you doing that speed in a lot pf places. To maintain the fastest speed limit in most countries probably doesn't even require 100hp. So a "short term peak rating" that lets you use 1000hp for 10 seconds will accelerate you in a _very_ "sporting" fashion for as long as you're likely to be able to hold the accelerator down (outside of a race track or autobahn).
Back when I raced quadcopters, I'd happily set them up to pull 200% or more of the rated power of the motors and batteries, because if you kept it pinned at full throttle it would have vanished out of sight within 2 seconds. (You had to be somewhat more circumspect with the motor controllers, the magic smoke could come out of those way faster - sometimes going pop effectively instantly if you started to approach 150% of rated capacity, sometimes even 120% would blow them up ij just a few hundred milliseconds.)
In the press release, they mention 350-400 kW continuous power. The motor weight is given as 12.7kg so this translates to 27.6-31.5 kW/kg (16.76-19.2 hp/lb) continuous power.
The weight and form factor looks excellent for small propeller planes. Yes, batteries are heavy, but the lightweight of the motor makes room for more batteries.
A typical Rotax 912 with accessories goes over 55 kg for 80 HP max and ~ 60 HP cruise. The 100 HP/75 HP version is around 65 kg. The same continuous power with this technology looks like a 5 kg motor and 60 kg of batteries for a direct replacement, if we consider the regular fuel tanks of 50-100 kg on some planes (I used to fly a plane that took 140 liters of fuel with a 100 HP Rotax, but it was modified) then there is enough battery for a flight school needs.
What always shocked me were the number of tech-oriented people that were are not aware of the tremendous progress in lithium ion batteries. And not just in the cost, performance, and reduction in materials needed. Production capacity grows by 10x in a mere five years. We were at 1.2TWh of production in 2024, and will be at ~20TWh in 2030. When batteries are eventually recycled, they get recycled into a higher power capacity than went in because recovery of materials is high and gains in production are even higher.
The global average cost of solar panels is $90/kW. With high tariffs, it's $150/kW in India and $270/kW in the US. Raising tariffs is something like 6 months of price drops. (Meanwhile installed, it costs $500-$3000 on residential properties...)
Solar and storage are some of the most impressive technologies of the past century, and so many people are sleeping on the huge changes it will have.
> The global average cost of solar panels is $90/kW.
I don't remember where I read about it first, but the fact that Pakistan is installing gigawatts of solar panels per year made me smile. It's not a coordinated effort, either; people choosing between (1) relying on janky transmission lines, (2) feeding a diesel generator, and (3) buying a rectangle that creates electricity and a cheap battery tend to choose option 3.
I think these days the solar panels and even batteries are quite cheap, but the equipment needed build a hybrid system for a house is still a mess. One can find the right inverter, but not a good match for the battery, the backup/switching system that needs to match, DC fuse boxes, especially for European systems that are 230V and sometimes 3-phase, the progress is not good enough even if the problem is simple enough.
> weighed 28.8 pounds, and achieved a peak power of 550 kilowatts
How well does this scale down? Can I have a 550 watt motor that's 1/1000th the size and that weighs 0.0288 pounds? Would be nifty to have an e-bike without any visible motor.
In the low-tens of kg, I have to wonder if we will just start mass-producing a single motor and just change the driving electronics for different vehicles/applications. Eg: De-rating this motor via driving electronics for aviation to only produce 200hp would be interesting for experimental designs.
Readit News
Not to take away from the exciting achievement, but I always found comments like this kindof unusual. Really, it exceeded even your _most optimistic_ simulations? If the high end of your simulated performance was below what you actually measured, I am worried that your simulation is seriously neglecting something. I used to work in decent depth with three phase bldc motors, so I feel I can say with some authority that these things _can_ be simulated, and while real world data is hard to exactly predict, getting something outside of the predicted range would generally be interpreted as a sign that your simulation isn't so good. But maybe this is just marketing-speak, and their simulations are actually totally fine.
I suspect that the marketing guy's eyes glazed over when the engineers tried to explain confidence intervals to him. He demanded a simple figure. They gave him the median projected value to make him go away. The tested value was above median projection and thus you get this wordspew.
Spoken like a true engineer.
Either that, or your measurements are inaccurate.
If I take it literally versus hyperbole and excitement, could there be uncertainty coming from the drive train design choices, system integration details?
Short-term peak ratings for electric motors are always huge. You can put in higher voltages up to arc-over. More interesting is sustained output. 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, continuous duty. That's all about how well it can get rid of heat.
That's why electric motors have a "temperature rise" number on the data plate. That's the steady-state temperature increase from a cold start when run continuously at rated power.
edit: After looking at your account, I see you are John Nagle, and I worry that I am confidently-incorrect here, lol. I'll leave the comment as-is because it is still my genuine belief, but feel free to correct me if I'm totally off!
A big problem with older permanent magnet motors was that too much current could produce a field strong enough to demagnetize the magnets. Supposedly this is is less of an issue in the cobalt-neodymium magnet era, because the coercivity of those alloys is so high.
Then there's finding a pulsed current source to power the windings. Ultracapacitors are good for that.
Then there's finding big enough semiconductors to switch the thing. This, too, has become much easier. It's amazing how much current you can put through modern power MOSFETs.
Then there are mechanical limitations. At some point, something is going to bend from sheer torque. At some point below that, the windings will distort a little on each cycle and wear out.
Applications for this include railguns, catapults, and electrically launched rollercoasters. Interestingly, they're all linear motors.
(I haven't looked at this since the 1990s. The components needed are now far better and more available. Mostly as a spinoff of the electric car industry.)
Cars are a good example of this. There are very few public roads in the world where a car can use 1000hp for more than a few or perhaps a few tests of seconds at a time. On a drag strip a 1000hp street car might run a low 9 second quarter mile reaching around 150mph. That'll put you in jail if a cop sees you doing that speed in a lot pf places. To maintain the fastest speed limit in most countries probably doesn't even require 100hp. So a "short term peak rating" that lets you use 1000hp for 10 seconds will accelerate you in a _very_ "sporting" fashion for as long as you're likely to be able to hold the accelerator down (outside of a race track or autobahn).
Back when I raced quadcopters, I'd happily set them up to pull 200% or more of the rated power of the motors and batteries, because if you kept it pinned at full throttle it would have vanished out of sight within 2 seconds. (You had to be somewhat more circumspect with the motor controllers, the magic smoke could come out of those way faster - sometimes going pop effectively instantly if you started to approach 150% of rated capacity, sometimes even 120% would blow them up ij just a few hundred milliseconds.)
A typical Rotax 912 with accessories goes over 55 kg for 80 HP max and ~ 60 HP cruise. The 100 HP/75 HP version is around 65 kg. The same continuous power with this technology looks like a 5 kg motor and 60 kg of batteries for a direct replacement, if we consider the regular fuel tanks of 50-100 kg on some planes (I used to fly a plane that took 140 liters of fuel with a 100 HP Rotax, but it was modified) then there is enough battery for a flight school needs.
Seeing these pop up at a lot of flying schools for basic training.
This is a spin-off company from YASA whose purpose is to supply them for aircraft together with other bits.
The world speed record for electric aircraft is held by an aircraft with 3 YASA motors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hapBP-Cdis&t=418s&pp=0gcJCd...
The global average cost of solar panels is $90/kW. With high tariffs, it's $150/kW in India and $270/kW in the US. Raising tariffs is something like 6 months of price drops. (Meanwhile installed, it costs $500-$3000 on residential properties...)
Solar and storage are some of the most impressive technologies of the past century, and so many people are sleeping on the huge changes it will have.
I don't remember where I read about it first, but the fact that Pakistan is installing gigawatts of solar panels per year made me smile. It's not a coordinated effort, either; people choosing between (1) relying on janky transmission lines, (2) feeding a diesel generator, and (3) buying a rectangle that creates electricity and a cheap battery tend to choose option 3.
The on grid includes panels On grid inverter Wiring Instslation and earthing
How well does this scale down? Can I have a 550 watt motor that's 1/1000th the size and that weighs 0.0288 pounds? Would be nifty to have an e-bike without any visible motor.
Anyhow, I rarely see more than 35 kW indicated for less than a minute at a time.
So can I get my 59kW/kg to go, please? I will take two kilograms.