Donut Lab, a subsidiary of Verge Motorcycles, has developed a novel approach to building electric vehicles – its development platform offers manufacturers a library of inter-compatible components that can be used to produce new EVs such as supercars, buses, drones or SUVs, in reduced time.
“Verge TS is the world’s most advanced electric motorcycle. When developing it, we learned how difficult and slow it is to build electric vehicles using traditional mechanisms. The reason for this is that vehicles are built with components from different equipment manufacturers and are not designed to work together – integration work always takes up most of the time. We decided that if we were able to solve this, we would change the entire automotive industry,” said Marko Lehtimäki, CEO of Donut Lab.
One of the main components of the new platform is the donut-shaped motor, which enables better performance than other motors in all vehicle categories. In addition, a motor installed in the wheel eliminates the need for a drivetrain, making it lighter and more affordable to manufacture.
Other components of the platform include battery modules, computer units and vehicle control software. These components are available in a range of sizes and performance classes, and the modular architecture guarantees the components can be used to build different vehicles.
Donut Lab’s components also work excellently as standalone parts, and a manufacturer could incorporate a donut motor into a vehicle built from traditional mechanisms. According to Donut Lab, the platform significantly speeds up the development cycle of EVs and can reduce the resource requirements for vehicle development by up to 95% compared to the present level.
“We want to set a new standard for what electric transportation can achieve. The Donut platform creates entirely new opportunities for almost any industry. In the future, those utilizing the platform will be able to select the components they want from a catalog and connect them with standard connectors, after which everything is ready. There is no need for compromises since each component is top class already as a standalone component, and together they take the vehicles themselves and their manufacturing to a whole new level,” said Ville Piippo, product director at Donut Lab.
One of the biggest benefits of the platform is its scalability to suit a different application, such as hypercars, helicopters, robots and even space mission ATVs. Donut Lab says the platform has already attracted a lot of interest from various vehicle manufacturers, and the company has agreed to collaborate with various operators.
Oruga, a Latvian company that manufactures electric vehicles for off-road driving, has used the Donut Lab platform in the development of its most recent model, and Australian company Hyper Q Aerospace is also using the Donut platform in its electric aircraft.