Mahle Powertrain and Protean Electric have revealed PHEV demonstrator collaboration aimed at showcasing the benefits of in-wheel electric motors.
A standard 1.4-liter car was turned into a parallel hybrid vehicle through the use of in-wheel electric motors in the rear wheels of the car.
The vehicle features Protean’s compact direct drive in-wheel motors with integrated inverters on the rear axle and retains the standard 1.4-liter gasoline engine and manual transmission driving the front axle.
The companies describe the parallel drive setup as a ‘through the road’ arrangement, which allows the vehicle to operate in rear-wheel drive EV mode, conventional front-wheel drive IC engine mode or full hybrid all-wheel drive. The companies say that the in-wheel motors also offer in-built torque vectoring.
The setup also brings considerable fuel consumption benefits. The NEDC fuel economy was reduced from 6.4 to 1.7 l/100km (36.8mpg to 138mpg) and the CO₂ emissions from 149g/km to less than 40g/km. The vehicle achieves an impressive 0-100 km/h time of less than 7.0 seconds (half that of the baseline vehicle) and top speed has also increased by more than 10%.
September 15, 2015