What type of motor do electric cars use?

[cjjonesarmory]

Trying to determine if a bank of smaller horsepower electric motors could be used in place of a larger single motor.

What type of motor is used in electric or hybrid vehicles? I'm thinking a 230V motor would be more efficient than something that ran on say standard 12V.

How much horsepower (or probably more appropriately torque) do the electric motors generate. Haven't found any real solid info on this technology. Any links would be appreciated.

I should be able to figure out the electrics to make a bank of smaller motors work, just not sure what is standard in production vehicles.

[Al_The_Man]

The DIY electric car community has been active for some years now, There should be quite a few active sites by now.
In the early days, DC motors were prevalent, now just as in the Locomotive field, AC has taken over.
DC motors and PM AC often posses full torque at zero rpm.
There were some designs that used a motor on each wheel, along the lines of Locomotive practice.
These usually require the addition of wheel slip detection, however.
A little like the traction control used on current autos.
Al.

[rowbare]

This is certainly more detail than you wanted but ...

http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/tech/envi...Reports_12.pdf

[pminmo]

Originally Posted by Al_The_Man The DIY electric car community has been active for some years now, There should be quite a few active sites by now. In the early days, DC motors were prevalent, now just as in the Locomotive field, AC has taken over. DC motors and PM AC often posses full torque at zero rpm. There were some designs that used a motor on each wheel, along the lines of Locomotive practice. These usually require the addition of wheel slip detection, however. A little like the traction control used on current autos. Al.

It seems that most of the add on conversions use series wound DC motors. I suspect the future will probably be brushless pmdc motors as they are so much more energy efficient than AC or DC series field motors. With todays high intensity permanent magnetics, logic would say you have to take advantage of that "stored" energy of the PM as a portion of the equation. A lot of the new high efficiency motorized appliances are going to brushless pmdc motors. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's like 9X% verses 6X% efficient when comparing brushless pmdc to field wound motors.

[Al_The_Man]

The series wound DC motor has always prevalently used for traction motors, due to the high constant torque/high current capability.
Your automotive starter motor for instance is a series field wound motor, they should never be used without load due to the runaway condition that is possible, This is similar to Universal router motors where the maximum rpm is limited by the friction and fan windage etc.
With PM motors, the concern is demagnetization at high stator currents.
Here is a 'little' recent contract retro-fit of ours to traction motor dynamic braking to allow the use in the Canadian Rockies.
Al.

[pminmo]

One of the great things about going electric is the ability to use multiple technologies, you don't have to stick to one motor. I think the application is going to get real interesting....time will tell.

As far as demagnetization, you would think it would be pretty easy to incorporate "rebuild/overhaul" as periodic maintenance in the motor design process. Heck what it takes to change a timing belt on some of the current models is a nightmare in comparison as to what it should take to pull PM's in a motor designed to be "rebuilt".

Motor efficiency will be of extreme importance until a cheap energy storage media is figured out.