
New Electric Motor Could Boost Efficiency of EVs, Scooters, and Wind Turbines - amynordrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/new-electric-motor-could-boost-efficiency-of-evs-scooters-and-wind-turbines
======
MobileVet
These guys have definitely spent some money on PR since closing their
investment round in April. They have placed 4+ articles with many of the same
talking points, pictures and video over the last 2 weeks:

[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/linear-labs-electric-
turb...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/linear-labs-electric-turbine-
motor/)

[https://jalopnik.com/a-texas-startup-claims-to-have-made-
the...](https://jalopnik.com/a-texas-startup-claims-to-have-made-the-biggest-
advance-1837173127)

[https://newatlas.com/linear-labs-hunstable-electric-
motor/60...](https://newatlas.com/linear-labs-hunstable-electric-motor/60974/)

[https://insideevs.com/news/364852/linear-labs-hunstable-
elec...](https://insideevs.com/news/364852/linear-labs-hunstable-electric-
turbine/)

Funny to see the VC money being spent so tangibly and the timeline for
creatives, relationships and placements.

~~~
phkahler
And they don't really have anything useful. Their claims dont make any sense
to someone in the field. Now I have to file ieee spectrum under "willing to
pedal bullshit for money" like so many other publications.

~~~
MobileVet
Yea, not a good look for IEEE to be posting articles on buzz word vapor ware
with pretty pictures.

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jacquesm
10% is nothing to sneeze at but it also does not mean it is a game changer. I
like the way the coil ends are described, they are 'dead' weight in a normal
motor because they don't contribute to the flux but they do contribute to the
resistive losses in the motor. But that 10% of the length of the winding that
sits outside of the coil chambers is not responsible for 10% of the electric
consumption of the motor, which is not resistive in nature in an AC drive
motor.

I do like the fact that they believe they can do without a transmission
entirely, if that works it will save a good bit of energy through weight
reduction, mostly during acceleration and deceleration. The bit I don't get is
where they talk about DC-DC conversion, most electric cars that I know
something about the guts of use tri-phase AC drive.

Making this work across a wide range of scales will be an interesting
challenge, in my experience increased torque comes with its own challenges
(such as shafts snapping or rotors slipping on or shearing off the mounts of
the shaft they are mounted on).

~~~
crooked-v
> 10% is nothing to sneeze at but it also does not mean it is a game changer.

They give a quote on a practical application:

> The resulting Segway enjoyed a 50-percent increase in range, and four times
> the torque, which boosted the vehicle’s top speed and allowed it to climb a
> steep 20-percent grade.

If that scales up linearly to electric cars, that's quite a boost.

~~~
coryrc
That's a lie. Or, at least, there's another existing normal motor that can
achieve at least nearly the same results. Existing motors are already 90+%
efficient; it's not possible to make a 50% increase in range.

~~~
mywittyname
I agree that they are at least misrepresenting their achievement. However, for
the sake of argument, electric motor efficiency goes down quite a lot as
overall power potential and RPM both drop. So it's possible they've come up
with a sizeable efficiency improvement in a worst-case scenario, i.e.,
improving efficiency of a small motor in low RPM, part throttle situations.

If that's the case, however, it doesn't really bode well for them, as their
efficiency gains will not translate to the high-RPM, high-power motors used in
cars. I'm not EE, but I do know that most engineering involves making trade-
offs. So I wouldn't be surprised to learn that techniques to improve low-
power, low-RPM efficiency probably sacrifices high-power, high-RPM efficiency.

~~~
rickycook
they did call out scooters and drones, so id guess you’re right

------
jjtheblunt
Whenever i see a headline with a subjunctive mood verb (should, could, might,
may,...) I think "marketing propaganda".

------
hinkley
Previous conversations about this same announcement:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20660403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20660403)

------
brianolson
the patents are pretty good reads, no hype, just diagrams
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160020652A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160020652A1/en)
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160380496A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160380496A1/en)

------
cagenut
For those wondering what a seemingly marginal difference would mean in real
world examples, take a look at this video from a conference on electric
aircraft design a year ago:

High Torque, Low RPM Motors – Key Enablers of Quiet Flight
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXd4M_pZl78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXd4M_pZl78)

~~~
Gibbon1
I watched about half that. Interesting bit that newer high bypass turbofans
need gearing to match the turbine optimal shaft rpm to the fan's lower rpm and
higher torque.

Brings up

    
    
       High torque gears -> weight
       High speed gears -> maintence hassle
    

If I get this talk right the hope is the difference in weight penalty for an
advanced direct drive electric motor vs a gear train is nil. This guy is
pushing a very high efficiency design that minimizes magnetic and resistive
losses while being capable of high torque.

Neat.

~~~
aidenn0
Random OT trivia, but the first turbofan to fly was geared, and there have
been commercial geared turbofans in use at least since the early 70s.

It's always been a trade off of fewer compressor stages vs. not having gears.
Either of extra compression stages and gears add weight and reduce efficiency,
so it's always a tradeoff.

------
vezycash
>The company’s permanent-magnet tech requires no rare-earth metals.

~~~
phkahler
Neither does any other motor. It will be larger without them.

------
aurizon
A lot depends on information they have not yet shown us. We have seen some
hypebole, but there are dozens of 'free energy' people on you-tube making all
manner of expansive claims - again with no data. Their best bet is to partner
with Tesla or another combustion based car maker. They speak of patents - that
needs to be tested on a bench to confirm it. Tesla has many many patents that
they share on a mutual basis - which means I share mine if you share yours. So
if some car make wants to sign and exclusive with Linear Labs they may get cut
off from the Tesla patents?? If someone is too greedy they will find no buyers
as the old ways work fine. Look at how the Wright Brothers patent greed
eventually killed them off as they were invented around.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war)

So more data, more truth, more future

------
magduf
This whole thing sounds like a scam. Even worse, it's in an IEEE article. I'm
really glad I ended my subscription to them so many years ago if they've
fallen to these depths. Just look at this one line from their article:

>Torque is the amount of work that a motor or engine produces, typically
measured on a per-revolution basis.

No, that's energy, not torque. Torque is rotational force. Torque times
rotation is power, which is the rate of work. Work = energy. This is
Engineering 101 here; it's inexcusable for the IEEE of all organizations to
screw this up. I expect this kind of lousy journalism from a mainstream,
layman news outlet like NBC or something, not something aimed at engineers.

>A typical motor’s copper content could be reduced by 30 percent, while
generating equivalent torque, they say. So for a given torque level, the HET
consumes significantly less energy than competing designs.

Very little of the electrical energy input to a motor is consumed by resistive
losses in the windings; almost all of it is consumed by conversion to
mechanical energy. Reducing winding resistance is nice, but it's not going to
produce some enormous energy savings. Reducing the weight is helpful too, but
again, those extra windings are only a fraction of the motor's weight, and
unless the motor is being used in an aircraft, motor weight isn't really that
big a deal in a vehicle, battery weight is.

>The company’s permanent-magnet tech requires no rare-earth metals.

This sounds like a total crock. Always be suspicious of new inventions when a
single invention claims revolutionary advances in more than one field. Magnet
technology is separate from motor technology, just like CPU technology is
separate from mobile phone technology: it's a very necessary component, but
still a component, one which is usually sourced from an outside vendor. Motor
manufacturers do not make their own permanent magnets; there's companies that
specialize in that. And making magnets with the highest densities of magnetic
flux without rare-earth elements would be a pretty big game-changer, so why
are they talking about motor windings instead of this?

>The system incorporates a purely electronic transmission

A what? Not possible: a transmission is a mechanical item that converts rotary
motion into rotary motion at a different speed and torque level (e.g., high-
speed, low-torque into low-speed, high-torque). This is just a meaningless
sound bite. Most EVs use transmissions (usually single-speed "gearboxes", not
multi-speed "transmissions") because they'd have to make the motor physically
larger to generate the torque necessary to drive a car directly, and the extra
weight and size isn't worth it; it's easier to drive motors fast and use a
gearbox to gear it down, even with the efficiency loss.

>Many electrified vehicles must also integrate a DC-to-DC converter

Again, the "Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers" apparently don't
understand basic electronics any more. Most EVs use 3-phase brushless motors,
or induction motors (Tesla). The motor controllers are driven by DC because
that's what Li-ion batteries produce, and they output waveforms to directly
drive the windings on the motor in accordance with the current demand for
power. I don't see how they expect to get around some sort of controller here.

Sorry, this whole piece sounds like BS. The whole thing is likely some kind of
scam to get investor money and then disappear.

~~~
tln
> >The system incorporates a purely electronic transmission

> A what? Not possible: a transmission is a mechanical item that converts
> rotary motion into rotary motion at a different speed and torque level

Other articles about this company explain what this electronic "transmission"
is: variable windings. So they can switch from 6 phase to 4 to 3, which will
change the RPM per volt. I think.

[https://insideevs.com/news/364852/linear-labs-hunstable-
elec...](https://insideevs.com/news/364852/linear-labs-hunstable-electric-
turbine/)

------
AtlasBarfed
I'd like to see real comps with the Tesla M3 motor, which seems to be the
clear market leader in cost/perf ratio.

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reportgunner
You know it "will not" when the title says "could".

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ravedave5
I wonder how easy it is to manufacture comparitivly. Also I wonder how well it
works to generate electricity.

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kwhitefoot
So what is the advance that they have made? I couldn't see anything in the
article.

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nategri
Amusing to me that "scooters" gets the number two slot here.

