Porsche constructed its repute with internal-combustion sports activities automobiles, however on the flip of the twentieth century Ferdinand Porsche, whose son Ferry would later begin the sports-car model, tinkered with electrical motors—together with in-wheel hub motors.
The first electric-vehicle growth occurred on the flip of the twentieth century, earlier than inner combustion established itself because the dominant expertise. And on Apr. 4, 1900, an EV that the then 24-year-old Porsche helped develop was unveiled on the Paris World’s Truthful.
Having beforehand a full electrical automobile in 1898, Porsche designed electrical motors to be built-in with the entrance hubs of a automobile constructed by the Austrian agency of Jason Lohner & Co. in a interval of solely 10 weeks. Every motor generated 2.4 hp, which received the automobile, referred to as a Lohner-Porsche, as much as a prime pace of 19.8 mph. In addition to the motors, one other notable innovation of the Lohner-Porsche was four-wheel braking—a rarity on the time.
Working with Ludwig Lohner, Porsche continued to develop hub motors, creating three sizes with outputs as much as 11.8 hp to be used in vehicles and buses in addition to passenger automobiles. These motors have been supposed to be used with lead-acid batteries—typical of the time—that offered a claimed vary of as much as 31 miles.
Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus hybrid
Porsche additionally designed an all-wheel drive electrical race automobile named La Toujours Contente (French for “the one who’s all the time completely happy”), with one 13.8-hp motor powering every wheel. However the engineer’s hub motors noticed essentially the most use in hybrids—beginning with the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus (Latin for “all the time alive”), which mixed entrance hub motors with a gasoline engine.
Lohner and Porsche finally utilized the identical hybrid structure to about 300 manufacturing autos, together with 40 for the Viennese hearth division, in addition to assorted taxis and personal passenger automobiles.
Greater than a century later, in-wheel motors are nonetheless attracting curiosity, though adoption for manufacturing autos has been sluggish. Chinese language automaker Dongfeng claimed to be the primary to make use of them in a fully-homologated passenger automobile in 2023, though they have been additionally supposed for the Lightyear 0 and Lordstown Endurance earlier than manufacturing of each automobile stalled.
Aptera can also be together with hub motors in what it claims will likely be a super-efficient 3-wheeler, and patent filings from Ferrari, Hyundai, and Toyota point out they’re being studied by established automakers as properly.