YASA’s axial flux motors: torque of the town
Back in May, The Manufacturer travelled to Yarnton to visit axial flux electric motors and controllers manufacturer, YASA.[1] While there, Molly Cooper spoke with Tim Woolmer, Founder and CTO and Richard Firmstone, Operations Director at YASA, about the company's journey and how it's going to take advantage of the hybrid vehicle market...
FAQs
- What are axial flux motors?
- Which automakers use YASA motors?
- Why aren't axial flux motors mass market yet?
- How many motors will YASA produce annually?
Key Takeaways
- YASA develops axial flux motors delivering up to 4x the performance of radial flux motors.
- The company is scaling to produce 25,000 motors annually by 2025.
- Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz are among its key customers.
- Cost remains the barrier to axial flux motors entering the mass market.
- Digitalisation and manufacturing innovation drive YASA's competitive edge.
Transforming electric drive technology
Investment in manufacturing innovation
YASA is transforming electric drive technology by developing advanced axial flux motors for electric and hybrid vehicles, delivering up to four times the performance of conventional radial f lux motors while remaining compact, lightweight and thermally efficient. Following a multi-million-pound investment, the company has enhanced its manufacturing capabilities with four newly constructed coil and bar production cells, equipped with state-of-the-art CNC winding, automated impregnation and laser stripping processes.
Precision and scaling
The integration of cutting-edge coordinate measuring technology enables rotor balancing with six times greater accuracy, increasing reliability, repeatability and production flexibility. These advancements help eliminate component bottlenecks and ensure full traceability across every motor built.
Now part of the Mercedes-Benz Group, YASA is scaling its operations to produce over 25,000 high-performance motors annually, bringing its technology to current and future partners.
Where it began
From PhD project to breakthrough idea
Back in 2003, Tim Wooler, Founder and CTO of YASA, was a young engineering student about to begin his fourth-year project, only to find that he was the only student out of 150 to not be allocated one. "I was tasked to go and find a subject I wanted to study and as an engineer, I was interested in why there were no electric cars. Beginning my research, I found that the batteries being used at the time only had a range of 60 miles and every vehicle that had been made back then, had failed or crashed," he explained. Tim began a PhD project with a supervisor at the university, to develop electric motors and propulsion technologies for electric vehicles.
The f irst stage was focused on a hydrogen vehicle and Tim began to look at axial f lux motors.
Early findings on axial flux efficiency
A few weeks into his PhD, Tim stumbled onto the idea for YASA, the product, and he continued to spend the next three years of his PhD researching this new kind of electric motor. "I learned that if you consider the pure physics - ignoring manufacturing constraints - and compare the material usage in a radial flux machine versus an axial flux alternative, the axial flux design should be about one-third the size for delivering the same torque. In other words, for the same physical volume, an axial flux machine can deliver roughly three times the torque and power of a radial flux machine," explained Tim.
This got Tim interested as well as the university, which was happy to kick-start the company on the journey of building and creating axial flux motor technology.
Unique in the market
Compact design advantages
YASA technology is unique within the electric motor market yet the company does have its competitors. As it stands, YASA is the only axial flux manufacturer with any significant volume of its motors in the automotive industry. When compared to other axial flux technologies, YASA's is about half the volume meaning significantly smaller diameter and smaller axial length for the around.
Lightweight materials and coil design
This removes the need for the heavy stator yoke, cutting iron weight from about 25kg (like in a Tesla motor) to just 3kg.
It also uses flat, edge-wound coils instead of bulky end windings, making it more compact, easier to cool and more precise. That means better performance, lighter weight and smarter use of materials," said Tim.
Big customers
Ferrari's challenge
YASA has big customers within the automotive industry, including Ferrari which approached YASA with some unique challenges. The iconic Italian manufacturer wanted to meet specific performance characteristics, but within a small package size. "Given the features of the vehicle, in partnership with them, we were able to meet the challenges that they believed were impossible, having gone to the wider marketplace.
This was an exciting customer experience, where we were able to solve the problems for them. Now we're in 75% of the electrified Ferrari portfolio," said Richard Firmstone, Operations Director at YASA.
Mercedes-Benz partnership
In addition, working within the Mercedes portfolio has provided YASA with financial stability that also unlocks the possibility to work with the likes of Lamborghini and Ferrari. "It allows us to create a cutting-edge infrastructure within manufacturing to be able to face the challenges that they need us to be able to deliver against," Richard added.
Electric motor market
Hybrid and full electric applications
The electrification space is evolving and it's being driven by legislation. Yet, from Richard's point of view, market uptake, dynamics and infrastructure to support full electric is slowing.
But for YASA, this isn't an issue; as a business its products support both full electric and hybrid automotive models. "The market dynamic isn't harmful for us because we are working on future technology that is going to be built into full electric vehicles and existing technology that is already going into high-performance hybrid vehicles. The change for us is welcoming relationships with people who come to us for solutions on a hybrid strategy that they don't have.
But we're maturing our product portfolio and manufacturing capabilities to be able to service full electric when that comes," said Richard.
Performance improvements over time
Obviously one key issue for electric vehicles is range and this can be influenced by many factors, one of which is weight. YASA products are lighter, higher in performance and have better power density than other electric motors. Yet, most of the weight doesn't come from the motor, it comes from the battery, and if a vehicle is consuming less power, it can operate on a smaller battery.
And, YASA has continued to increase performance capability of its motors each year. "The original prototype Tim created during his PhD, was around one kilowatt per kilogram. Now, we're 15 times that in terms of our performance characteristics for the products we're making and selling right now," explained Richard.
Why not YASA?
The cost challenge
If YASA's motors are smaller, lighter and perform better, why isn't every electric automotive company using them?
According to Richard, the technology used to make YASA motors are far from commoditisation. "Radial flux motors are long established and being used within the automotive industry and other motor applications, globally. The materials that are used within those are readily available in the supply chain. The production processes also do not need to be as precise, therefore, creating a cost challenge between radial flux and axial f lux motors," explained Richard.
This is a limiting factor in bringing the axial flux motor application into the mass market.
High-performance niche
Right now, axial flux motors solve the problems of power to weight ratio and package size if that's critical to the architecture of the vehicle, making them ideal for high-performance vehicles, but due to cost, they aren't a mass market option. However: "Our next product iterations will open up a whole new level of opportunities," Richard added.
Key areas
Digitalisation and traceability
Digitalising processes has been an ongoing journey for many manufacturers, looking at what data their processes are creating and how they can utilise it. "One of the key drivers for change was the ability to have full traceability in a digital platform. The design of the new manufacturing process enables us to capture all the key data and send that into the digital cloud," said Richard.
From there, YASA can extract that information. This could be the performance characteristics that would be needed to provide the genealogy of the product, the appropriate process controls or the statistical process control (SPC) charts used to monitor the performance and health of an engine. All this can be used to improve future performance.
Supply chain and sustainability
The materials used within YASA products are quite simple and therefore, they have had minimal supply disruptions, unlike the rest of the sector in this difficult geopolitical climate.
Although not massively significant or causing disruption, sometimes issues do arise, however. "The simplicity of our materials make any issues less disruptive, however over time there have been some issues that have arisen which have required navigation. We've tackled these head on," said Richard. Regarding its sustainability strategies, YASA is in a formative stage in the goals its setting for itself and how it goes forward when opening and extending its supply chain. "We have a product that is going into a more sustainable energy footprint, but we recognise that what we're supplying now is being bolted to a combustion engine which is using a limited fuel source," he explained.
Evolution of electric
Scaling production
By the end of 2025, YASA will be turning out 25,000 units per annum, based on its current operations of a two-shift structure. "We've got a market demand that will require that volume over the course of next year and we have the ability to grow that without investment, by utilising the available capacity," said Richard.
Customer demand for hybridisation
In terms of growing its customer base, YASA has already had contact with groups that don't have a hybridisation strategy in place and now need one. "They have contacted us because we're uniquely placed with the ability to offer off-the-shelf products that could solve their problems with the current change of strategies they're going through," explained Richard.
He also expects to see growth within the next period as YASA will be continuing to deal with the slowdown of full electrification and take advantage of hybridisation.
Further reading
For more articles like this, visit our Innovation[2] channel.
References
- ^ YASA. (yasa.com)
- ^ Innovation (www.themanufacturer.com)