Talk:Wheel hub motor

July 2009
Removed: "The most popular hub motor bike/trike conversion kit is the go-hub from..." This doubtfull factoid came from danny dorris who, surprise, owns largo scooters.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spettro9 (talk • contribs) 04:50, 23 July 2009‎

More than cycling
Wheel hub engines are now standard for electric scooters and are shown in some prototype cars. I would propose to move this article out of the cycling only scope. On the international automobile show Frankfurt 2007, Volvo showed a prototype car with 4 wheel hub engines strong enough to renounce for mechanical brakes. When You need some photos to improve the article, please write me, I will put the photos on Wikipedia. All photos are made by myself visiting fairs or testing the products. --Pege.founder (talk) 10:25, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The contents of this article were taken from User:A-Hrafn/Wheel_motor, which was showing up at the top of a google search for wheel motor. The user A-Hrafn has not made any contributions since August of 2005, and has not responded to any comments on his talk page. Since everything in the stub was already included in that article, I simply replaced the stub. EthanL (talk) 23:15, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

This page is in need for a complete rewrite as many of the mentioned advantages are not correct, contain incorrect information or simply refer to other advantages not really related to the wheel motors. For instance, the average mechanical loss from a powertrain is about 8% or 1-2% per gear set; this is less than the efficiency disadvantage of having smaller motors instead of larger and fewer motors (such as axle mounted motors) and control electronics. In addition to that, wheelmotors significantly contribute to unsprung mass while regenerative braking itself does not require wheel motors, any traction motor will do. JEdlund 22:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Weight Savings
I would like to see a reference that backs this up.

A motor has magnets, copper wire, etc. You still need brake discs, suspension, etc. A transmission on an Imprezza is 150-180 lbs with 50 lbs of axles. Are wheel motors really that light? Not to mention the wheel motor is trading sprung weight for unspring weight.

I am working on a very weight limited car design that would benefit from wheel motors but I dont think they are lighter than an aluminum drive shaft and CV joint. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Integracer (talk • contribs) 16:22, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Merged Wheel motor + Hub motor into Wheel Hub Motor
I merged these two articles "Wheel motor" and "Hub motor" into one "Wheel Hub Motor" on 2009/07/23 Spettro9 (talk) 11:50, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

This article is in much need of a rewrite
I must repeat what JEdlund wrote 22:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC).

This article is in much need of a rewrite as many of the mentioned advantages are not correct, contain incorrect information or simply refer to other advantages not really related to the wheel motors. For instance, the average mechanical loss from a powertrain is about 8% for two wheel drive and about 18% for all wheel drive, far from the 30% and 40% stated in the article! In regards to unsprung mass there are today no wheel motors commonly available that can take up enought torque and power to make mechanical brakes 100% redundant in an emergancy 1G retardation. Only some very extreme sport cars may ever have such strong wheel motors as the power needed to brake would be able to accelerate the car from 0-100 km/h in less than 2.8 s! Most cars will have much less wheel motor power and hence will also need friction brakes. JasonCW 19:26, 4 August 2009 (CET) —Preceding unsigned comment added by JasonCW (talk • contribs)


 * Yes: the cost of the controllers which can actually absorb that much energy are much higher than those of a straightfoward "accelerative" controller. Specifically: if you have a 0-60 time of say 10 seconds but you want a braking time in emergencies of 5 seconds then the way that electricity works is, duh, you need a controller that could just as well take the vehicle from 0-60 in 5 seconds!  So now you have to spec the controller for that much power.  And if you know a bit about kinetic energy (KE=1/2.m.v-squared) and s=ut+1/2at-squared and all that, you'll know that you need to cope with *four* times the power in order to halve the acceleration (or deceleration) time.  that does *not* translate into a motor controller that's four times as expensive, it translates into one that's a lot more than that!  Not to mention that the batteries simply can't cope with that kind of influx of power (they'll boil or explode), not to mention the fact that if you try to dump that energy into Supercapacitors they're 10x the cost of batteries, and storing and recovering the energy (capacitors, remember? their voltage goes up, the more energy they store?) you now need complex high-voltage DC-DC step-up and step-down electronics.   Additionally, to do "Regen Braking" properly i.e. using a full H-Bridge requires the IGBT or MOSFET power transistors to handle at least *twice* the voltage normally applied during acceleration.  Compare the cost of 4QD's full H-Bridge controllers to those of say low-cost KellyController's or Axis Etrax controllers and you soon see what the problem is.  (KellyController's Regen Braking controllers only recover 10% of the energy, and they use a completely separate circuit from the rest of the "accelerative" electronics of their controllers.  10% energy recovery is nowhere near a 1G deceleration!).  The bottom line is that yes, it unfortunately has to be said that most of this page has been written by people who are ignorant of the combination of maths, physics, electronics, engineering (and some chemistry) that are required to actually understand why wheel hub motors aren't good for large general-purpose mass-volume EVs.  Whilst some of the page accurately quotes historical references as well as clear and obviously successful deployment of hub motors in bicycles, the actual main parts of it are uninformed but well-intentioned "myth" and wishful thinking that somehow, magically, hub motors are going to succeed if deployed in cars, where the very fact that there haven't really been any in actual successful production road cars since the 1900s should really tell you everything you need to know.  I found an article a couple of days ago which mentioned that even the hub motors used in the very first EV wheel hub cars were found to be problematic, but I can't remember where.  I'll see if I can find it again.  81.129.112.196 (talk) 18:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Improper Recent Edits
An IP editor has been making a large number of improperly-cite, non-encyclopedic, POV edits to this article. I have tried to revert, in that the edits have virtually nothing worth saving, but the IP editor continues to revert my reverts. I will take a step back now and let other editors weigh in on the recent edits. Please help. Thanks. Ebikeguy (talk) 15:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Please discuss this among yourselves and please don't edit war. Electric Catfish 16:25, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Apologies for any brusqueness in my first interaction with the IP editor. Although I am quite certain I did the "right thing," perhaps I should have been a bit more patient.  Ebikeguy (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

History
As I am a french student in history of technics, I would like to be connected with the writer who knows so well the US patents. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbmn (talk • contribs) 15:58, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Wheel hub motor vvs Wheel hub engine.
This article is about wheel hub (electric) motors.

I know of two motorcycles, the Megola and the Killinger & Freud, which had wheel hub (internal combustion) engines.

I wonder if there should be a short article in Wikipedia, and / or a mention of these engines in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jrvzn (talk • contribs) 20:01, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Wheel hub motor. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.hybridcars.com/history/history-of-hybrid-vehicles.html

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 18:23, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Patent Reference
The second bullet under history says this:


 * High torque low RPM wheel motor invented: The motor was incorporated into the wheel without gearing and addressed torque considerations through the use of a new high torque, low rpm motor invented by Edward Parkhurst of Woburn, MA in U.S. Patent 422,149 in 1890 (and mismentioned in Parcelle's patent as #320,699).

The Typo Team/moss typo page flagged "mismentioned". While trying to understand the context, I looked up patent #320,699. The US version does not reference a "Parcelle" nor does it mention a wheel hub motor. However, this is the first time I've ever looked up a patent so I might be missing something (such as, is this even a US patent?) I came up blank on other searches as well. Does anyone have any insight into this reference? CaptainAngus (talk) 02:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Patents
I've found three sources that reference the patents in the history section, but they all appear to have been copied, sometimes word-for-word, from this Wikipedia article. It would be helpful to provide a non-primary source that supports the history section that's not circular. HueSurname (talk) 09:49, 16 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Was it them copying WP or WP copying them? WP is supposed to rewrite it in its own words but some editors just cut and paste text directly from the references.  Stepho  talk 10:58, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Definitely the sources copying Wikipedia. from July 2009‎  already includes the text, mostly unchanged for the past 13 years. One source,, is from 2011 and copies the history section word for word in places! Wikipedia: "it was attached via some complicated gearing", source: "it was attached via some complicated gearing". Clearly circular. Another paper, this time a doctoral dissertation, , at least bothers to rephrase the Wikipedia article slightly: "an electric wheel motor equipped with a complex gear." There's an article written by an Elaphe Propulsion Technologies employee, , who may have actually edited this article and added all the links to Elaphe. There are some web pages that appear to be rephrased from the Wikipedia article without giving credit, and many that do give credit. Other academic papers are very likely based on the Wikipedia article but don't actually copy it, merely cite its sources in the same order and using similar descriptions. What would be nice to have is a paper that actually goes more in-depth than the Wikipedia article into the history of in-wheel motors, that way we'd definitely know the researcher did their own research. HueSurname (talk) 14:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)