Back in July, YASA (formerly Yokeless And Segmented Armature), a British electric motor startup with a revolutionary “Axial-Flux” motor, has been taken over by Mercedes-Benz. The acquisition did not get much press coverage as few other details were released. But YASA is probably a unit worth seeing.
YASA was founded in 2009 after being spun off from Oxford University and will now develop ultra-high-performance electric motors for the all-electric AMG.EA platform from Mercedes-Benz. It will remain in the UK as a wholly owned subsidiary, serving both Mercedes-Benz and existing customers such as Ferrari. The company will keep its own brand, team, facilities and location in Oxford.
YASA’s axial flux electric motors have attracted the interest of the electric vehicle industry because of their efficiency, high power density, small size, and light weight.
In contrast, the “radial” electric motor design is more common in today’s EV market. Even Tesla relies on radial electric motors, a legacy technology that is over 40 years old and has very little to offer in terms of innovation.
However, thanks to YASA’s axial flux design with very thin segments, they can be combined to form powerful individual drive units. This makes them a third of the weight of other electric motors, more efficient and three times the power density than Tesla.
Tim Woolmer, Founder and CTO of YASA, invented this very new approach to electric motor design. I caught up with him to find out what’s next.
TC: How’s the trip so far:
TW: We started a real task a little more than 12 years ago: let’s accelerate electric cars, let’s do everything we can to make electric cars faster. We are now 10 years in a 20 year revolution, every new car sold in 10 years will be electric, no question about it. For an engineer there is nothing more exciting than a time of revolution, because the speed of innovation counts. What is so exciting for us is that we can develop innovations quickly, and that is where the partnership with Mercedes is really interesting.
The story goes on
TC: What was different about the engine you developed?
TW: We started with a blank sheet of paper when I started my doctorate. And the idea was to say what could be created for the electric car industry in 10 or 15 years, what they would need that we could fulfill. Something that was lighter, more efficient, and mass-producible. Axial flux motors weren’t very common in the 2000s, but through the combination of axial flux technology and a few small tweaks using some new materials, I basically stumbled upon this new design we call YASA: Yokeless And Segmented Armature. It takes up a light topology in the axial flow and makes it even lighter, about half as much. This has the advantage that the rotors rotate with a larger diameter. So the torque is essentially force times diameter, so you get more torque with the same amount of force. So if you double your diameter, you get double the torque with the same amount of material. So that’s the benefit of the axial flow.
TC: You did that with the deal with Mercedes – what’s next?
TW: We are basically a wholly owned subsidiary. We will use the industrialization powerhouse from Mercedes. But the most important thing is when you look at how technologies filter down in the automotive industry, they start in the luxury sector, like the Ferraris of the world, and then filter into the mainstream sector and then go into higher volumes. This is a space where Mercedes is world class in terms of industrialization. That is the idea behind the partnership.
TC: What more can you do from here?
TW: We will have a very tall, high power, low density and light weight engine so that we can explore sporting performance combined with a high level of industrialization. That puts us in a really unique position for all sorts of things.
Though shy about his future plans, Woolmer is certainly one to watch out for in the electric and electric motor space. After the acquisition, YASA released this video:
Did you miss our previous article...
https://formulaone.news/mercedes/hamilton-tops-disturbed-opening-training
