Lol:
The new YASA axial flux motor weighs just 28 pounds, or about the same as a small dog.
However, it delivers a jaw-dropping 750 kilowatts of power, which is the equivalent of 1,005 horsepower.
I feel like we’d need peak horsepower output of a small dog to truly understand this.
If it’s a Corgi, I would estimate the power output at .1 horsepower max. But if it’s a small dog the size of a large dog, then that’s something entirely different.
But dog’s cost money…
Dog is cost money?
ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney.jpg
Just so we’re clear, you do not get any of my profits.
A dog’s power output comes from its muscle mass, which for a healthy dog is about 45% of its total body weight. This gives our 28-pound dog roughly 12.57 lbs (or 5.7 kg) of muscle.
Studies of animal muscle show that the peak power output of vertebrate muscle tissue during a short, explosive burst (like a jump or the start of a sprint) is around 100 to 200 watts per kilogram of muscle.
Now we can estimate the dog’s peak power:
- Low estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 100 W/kg = 570 watts
- High estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 200 W/kg = 1140 watts
Converting these figures to horsepower (1 horsepower = 746 watts):
- Low estimate: 570 W / 746 ≈ 0.76 horsepower
- High estimate: 1140 W / 746 ≈ 1.5 horsepower
So, a small 28-pound dog might be able to generate a peak power of around 0.75 to 1.5 horsepower for a very brief moment.
So this YASA motor is somewhere between 670 and 1,340 times more powerful than the dog it’s being compared to in weight. That’s some jaw-dropping power output.
I tried to sanity-test the math here running the same calculations on a 700 kg horse, of which around 50% mass is muscle.
700 kg x 50% = 350 kg
Low:
350 kg x 100 W/kg = 35,000 W
35,000 W / 746 ≈ 47 hp
High:
350 kg x 200 W/kg = 70,000 W
70,000 W / 746 ≈ 94 hp
Despite what the term “horsepower” would seem to suggest, a horse can actually output more than one horsepower. Estimates put peak output of a horse around 12-15 hp. By those numbers, even the low end estimate above is around 3-4x too high. We’re gonna need more dogs.
We’re gonna need more dogs.
I accept your terms.
I appreciate the sanity check, but just to throw a monkey wrench into your model…
I think the square-cube law will bite you here. I expect power/mass isn’t constant. Mass grows faster than cross-sectional area which is key in muscle performance.
Fair
Horsepower was originally used to describe the work that a horse could do over the course of an hour. Specifically, the number of times an hour a horse could turn a mill wheel at a brewery. These are estimates of peak power, not sustained power, so I would say that it’s accurate that horses can produce significantly more than one horsepower in short bursts.
Stop burning the planet down to generate social media comments about shit you don’t understand
If I’m not mistaken, you specifically showed an interest in better understanding this.
I recognise their username. It’s half sane takes, half absolute wankery with them.
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That was a joke
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Stop fucking use AI, or at least get used to a sizable portion of people to tell you, that you’re burning the only planet we have down over shit that doesn’t matter.
Username checks out
deleted by creator
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I’m guessing that would be if every muscle was being used for propulsion at any given time. You’d need to allow for heart and lungs, as well as face, neck, tail muscles that don’t contribute to power output, plus legs don’t provide continuous power as they need to make a return trip.
If we really wanted to optimise a dog for power:weight there are quite a few systems we could do away with. But it would likely result in a less floofy doggo, so it’s obviously not an option.
or about the same as a small dog.
Americans will use anything but the metric system
Small imperial dog, US dogs are different.
British imperial or US customary?
You can talk horsepower and dogpower all day, but I won’t really understand until you convert it to bananapower, for scale.
Something something anything but metric…
For all non Brits: 1 dogpower = 1005 horsepower It’s an imperial unit. You’re welcome.
Had an ex-friend who was a motorhead arguing that electric motors will never beat ICE because they lack comparable torque. Look, I’m no mechanic, but I never got my head around that.
“You mean they don’t have enough torque to run a US destroyer?! Someone should call the Navy.”
Seriously, if you’ve played with even a tiny electric motor, provide DC, it goes, instantly. What could he have possibly been trying to say?
I think he was trying to admit he doesn’t know shit about electric motors.
Tool companies need to nerf electric motors in drills to prevent wrists from breaking.
My parents had an original Prius and it was a weedy little car that made those two hippies really happy. If that was his only experience with electric cars I can see why he’d think that.
But the new ones are fucking rockets. I just don’t understand why they need all that. Can they make a cheaper one that’s got 300 horsepower?
What could he have possibly been trying to say?
I mean, the general appeal of ICE engines is the fuel, not the engine. Gasoline is generally more energy dense than lithium.
Nah, his complaint was lack of torque. Very strange, never got it. Figured he was repeating fossil fuel propaganda. But he was a motorhead!
And yes, energy density is the thing no one talks about when raging against fossil fuels. A gallon of refined gasoline packs insane energy. I’ve run my 5-gallon, crappy Harbor Freight generator all night into the morning, powering the camp, heaters and all, never came close to emptying it. Contrast that with a monster LIPO4 battery that died in 48-hours only powering LED lights. (Gotta admit, something weird happened there.)
It is funny because electric motors have nearly unlimited* torque depending on the kind. If you have thick enough power cables and winding conductors, you can just keep pushing it harder to get more torque.
It is like the thing they are very good at, besides sound levels, double or triple the efficiency, low/no maintenance, simpler with less parts, no emissions, etc…
Literally the only good thing about combustion engines are their fuel source energy density.
I think the problem is that motorheads see the enshittification of the auto industry as a whole and just say it’s because of electric motors because it happened right about the same time as EVs started coming out and try to push back on the wrong thing.
The vroom vroom noises are good too.
Interestingly I’ve a relative who used to be a car salesman and still gets invited to dealer events occasionally - he was telling me about an electric he got to test a year or so back, it had a simulated gear shift/gear knob setup. He said people were loving it.
Nah, his complaint was lack of torque.
Maybe just had torque confused with horsepower? That’s been the historical trade-off between gas and electric. Sure, its very easy to get an electric motor to jump into action. But it is comparatively difficult to generate the same amount of power with equivalent fuel density.
A gallon of refined gasoline packs insane energy.
Much of which is lost to heat when combusted, which is the historical hang-up.
Not that batteries don’t have their own heating problems. But the benefit of batteries is that they’re an engineering problem we can solve with miniaturization, which we’ve become incredibly good at. We’re at a soft ceiling in terms of engine chemistry. Petroleum is about as refined as we’re going to get it. Combustion’s math is what it is. Improvements to the efficiency of modern engines have stalled out as an automotive tool, even to the point that a gas engine powering an electric capacitor in a hybrid yields performance improvements over the gas engine just spinning the wheels directly.
I would love to replace work van with an electric one, but so far it’s not possible for one main reason (other than cost)…I often tow quite heavy trailers and my diesel can tow 2500kg, but every electric van I’ve looked at can only tow 750kg. Maybe it’s something to do with that?
He was trying to say that he spent too much time in a media bubble disconnected from reality.
These same idiots tell me my hybrid battery will only last 20,000 miles a cost $50,000 to replace. Yeah sure.
Yea I’ve been hearing that one since 2003 with my original Prius. That battery lasted 23 years before it crapped out, and modern battery tech is waaaaay better than that thing. Also it wouldn’t have been that much money to refurbish the battery if it hadn’t been too smashed up to bother.
“EVs lack comparable torque to ICE” - guy in my rearview mirror
Electric motors don’t have a torque curve like ICE, which is why they don’t need a transmission. Those massive submarines run on electric motors.
Ah good thing the batteries are not the heavy part of the system otherwise this would be awkward.
This motor weighs 12.7 kilograms and has 1000hp. How much does a comparable motor weigh?
There is a 1000 hp tesla with 3 motors that all together weights about 450 killograms, this seems to support your idea until you look at how much the batteries weigh…
The batteries are 550 kilograms to start, and are generally considered to not be big enough. So yeah, great they solved the issue that no EV had (EVs always had lighter motors, and very heavy batteries).
Edit: The 1000 hp telsa is 2200 Kg total, so yeah this would cut out 400 ish Kgs (assuming cooling and inverter and all that) from the total, not nothing but not really a game changer ether. Also 1000 Hp engine is stupid and not needed, maybe if it was a 200 Hp version but then also that would be diminishing returns as this motor would be what 4 kgs?
~20% weight reduction for a total vehicle weight isn’t small change. Plus batteries will continue to improve as well. Do you just get off on being negative?
Yeah, I’m not sure how they concluded in their edit that 400kg is not a lot to shed.
Texas divorce.
Making the motor lighter gives weight allowance for the onboard BESS. This could allow more batteries to be installed on the same car, increasing range and power/torque, so long as the volume of the car allows that same BESS increase.
It’s still good progress. I don’t understand your POV where we must focus on the BESS first and make that more efficient, both in terms of weight, volume, power, and energy, then move on to other things.
We can do that in parallel and see faster improvements.
Until someone tests it independently, this should be considered BS.
This looks small enough to be installed within the wheel hub itself. Imagine a car with four motors, one inside each wheel. The entire floor pan could just be one thin battery, and everything above it could be passenger and storage space.
That’s how EVs started! Sorta.
This is from a Porsche in 1900:
And some 2000s EVs tried it. But it’s impractical.
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It increases unsprung weight, e.g. weight not cushioned by suspension. Bad for ride/handling/steering feel.
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All that vibration is HARD on the motor. Read: unreliable.
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Motor is more exposed to temperature/dust. Again, reliability.
In reality, a decent suspension needs a lot of room under the body anyway. An axle to get the motor in the body is dirt cheap on the rear, and still pretty cheap on the front, and you could just mount this thing sideways to make it flat…
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That would be a lot of unsprung weight.
Handling and ride quality are dramatically and negatively impacted by every bit of weight that is not held up by the suspension. That’s why higher performance cars will have lightweight wheels. Rather than steel wheels you see on lower performance cars.
It’s better to just put all the heavy drive components inboard on the chassis and run drive shafts to the wheels.
You see motors in the hubs of bicycles, because they really don’t go that fast. So even if the bike has a suspension, it’s not that big of a deal. Motorcycles on the other hand would need to keep any heavy parts inboard.
PS
One issue I hadn’t thought of is putting traditional brakes (which generate a ton of heat) right next to the motors. Again, we’re just asking for mechanical issues here, and we’re ballooning unsprung mass to mitigate it, especially in heavier cars that take a lot to stop.
The entire floor pan could just be one thin battery, and everything above it could be passenger and storage space.
This seems like a minor thing, but the control electronics for the motors takes up a nontrivial amount of space. So do “traditional” subsystems like hydraulics, climate control, or an old fashioned car battery (which often exists in parallel to the EV drivetrain).
Theres also safety to consider. A traditional sedan “hood,” even a small one, is easier on standing pedestrians, so it hits their legs and they flop on top, instead of slamming them like a wall (as a bus-like front would).
Aptera wanted to do this with their flagship Solar Electric Vehicle (SEV).
IIRC, they switched to an outwheel motor because of the weight the inwheel motors added to the wheels. Could be wrong tho
Aptera
LOL. Coming soon…since 2009
For real lmao
Except for the fact that that much power would need massive batteries. So your thin small battery would be dead the first time you mashed the peddle to the floor
forgot the part where they were excited to put the batteries on the tire
Hub motors are a party trick. They will never reach mass market in a car.
They work well on bikes. I could appreciate 1000bhp hub on my 12kg touring bike. 🤭
I agree, they are good for minimally suspended low speed personal transport.
German company DeepDrive has some kinda promising tech. And the ID.Polo seems to be said to have hub motors.
Not even the concept had hub motors.
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/volkswagen-id-polo
https://electricarworld.com/volkswagen-polo-makes-a-comeback-as-an-electric-car/
https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/electric-vehicles/volkswagen-id-polo-gti-breaks-cover-at-iaa-mobility-comes-as-reborn-polo-gti-41757316409552.htmlLimited slip differential? Can’t do that with hub motors. https://www.topgear.com.ph/news/car-news/volkswagen-id-polo-prototype-a5100-20250908
If you have different information about a production car, please share it. The theoretical concept ID.2 R may use hub motors but that is vaporware at this point.
I only have german articles. I only heard it in the video source below, and they sadly don’t really say how the normal problems with hub motors would be solved even though they have a section for it in the video.
https://www.electrive.net/2025/06/20/vw-soll-neues-topmodell-id-2-r-mit-radnabenmotoren-erwaegen/
Renault 5 RS Turbo has hub motors, Nostradamus.
mass market
There’ll be 1,980 of these builtThat car is the definition of a party trick. You proved my point, so thank you.
Right, because 2000 of something is not mass production.
And here is a source in China definitely not making >20 hub motors for cars, scooters, etc.
And BMW did not invest $30M in DeepDrive, hub motor supplier.
You should tell these people they are all stupid.
No, less than 2000 cars is not mass market.
To secure your order for one of the 1,980 examples of Renault 5 Turbo 3E, contact us below. You’ll get a call back very soon to make an appointment to reserve in the retailer.
Sounds very limited market.Those are golf cart and scooter motors, not suitable for highways
BMW currently uses brushed motors in their EVs so I’m not looking to them for any advice. Maybe BMW wants their traditional central layout CM450 tech. But! DeepDrive is the first hub motor I’ve seen that did not need gearing, so that is actually cool. I think they’ll be relegated to rear wheels due to scrub radius limitations but that could be ok.
Renault 5 RS Turbo
That’s because its a limited run show car. Its not meant to be practical.
Imagine on a motorcycle… Probably nonstop wheely 🤣
They make sense for scooters, bikes, and other low speed or two wheel personal transport. For anything with an actual suspension (designed for a highway) there is just too much competition for space with brakes and suspension linkage. The unsprung weight, exposed high voltage cabling subject to road debris and accidents are problems too. And what to do hub motors really gain you?
Less weight, less parts, 4WD, 4W traction control, more cabin space because no driveshafts.
Probably nonstop wheely
uni-motorcycle
This is already pretty close to how many EVs are designed.
1000 hp = 0.75 MW. If 98% efficient that’s 15KW of heat dissipation Sounds like a subsystem bigger than the motor.
Yep, I noticed that, you’re right. And that’s near-miraculous efficiency. The maker’s website sez: “YASA also estimates that its all-important continuous power will be in the region of 350kW-400kW (469bhp-536bhp).” It also sez: "To achieve a 750kW short-term peak rating and a density of 59kW/kg … " Devi’ls in the details … The image on the ‘superblondie’ page shows A LOT of cooling built into whatever metal that is: https://supercarblondie.com/wp-content/uploads/YASA-tiny-electric-motor.webp
Sez. I lol’d
EV motors are already over 90% efficient. They don’t piss away evergy as heat like ICE, where about 40% of the gas is wasted as heat and noise.
28 pounds = 12.7kg, for those wondering.
But, how much is that in baby elephants?
Roughly a tenth of a baby elephant, or around two round trips of your neurons on a single line reaching the moon
My eScooter weighs 42 pounds.
A 28 pound motor that’s 750 kW?
Holy fuck.
That’s power density straight out of science fiction
Ebike would probably fold in half from the torque lol
It only does that at peak for a few seconds, practically, about a third that power.
cant wait for corporations to crush the competition with some bullshit yet again and then complain that we’re at peak EV tech anyway
Anything but metric!
1000 horses sounds cooler than 735 electrical pixies a second.
And somehow also more impressive than one Zeus per minute
But horses are measured in hands, average of 16 hands so 16000 hands, 8000 people. That’s like 1 electrical pixie per 11 people
Horsepower is a pretty standard way to advertise things in the automotive industry…
But it should be kilowatts. There’s no reason not to use the standard metric for power, it’s unnecessary fragmentation of figures
300-400kW continuously should be the headline. Thats impressive. Lots of motors can try and make 1000hp if you feed them enough voltage but only for a split second before they overheat and burn out. I wonder how long it can do this 1000HP.
Once I figured out it was an axial flux prototype motor this whole article made sense.
Nerd
This, in a folding, commuter e-bike.
*guns throttle* Tires and tube liquify, blast apart, rim rapidly grinds to nothing against the pavement, spokes rocket in all directions. Onlookers remark: “pretty cool way to go out…” And then give the 🤘 hand gesture
The size is less of an issue than the power usage.
Does it also use 1000% more power to get that strength?
The only real benefit in that case would be robot mech suits.
Hopefully the numbers are correct. The article however is shockingly terribly written.
These get shit out by LMs at the rate of a dozen a day.
