Technological leap through a new cooling concept—compact, light, efficient, and, by customer request, without the use of rare earth elements
Suitable for passenger cars, commercial vehicles, construction machines, and tractors
MAHLE becomes a full-range provider in the field of electric drives
On the drivetrain side, this clears the way for the replacement of the combustion engine in all vehicle classes. In 2021, MAHLE presented a groundbreaking wear-free and scalable traction motor for passenger cars that runs very efficiently over a wide rpm range.
The SCT E-motor, on the other hand, is designed in such a way that it is particularly efficient within a certain rpm range. Despite its very compact and light design, its continuous output is more than 90 percent of its peak output. A classic example is driving an electric truck over mountain passes or the multiple sprints of a battery electric passenger car. These scenarios are only insufficiently covered by the electric motors available on the market up to now.
This resilience is achieved by the new MAHLE electric motor through the use of an innovative integrated oil cooling, which not only makes it more robust but also allows the waste heat generated to be used in the vehicle’s complete system. At the same time, the extremely compact design results in an advantage in the costs of materials and weight—a lighter motor requires less material during manufacture and increases the possible net load in commercial vehicles.
In designing the product, MAHLE opted for what is known as a permanently excited motor, since this type enables a very compact design and no energy has to be transferred to the rotor as “excitation current”. This makes the motor efficient and wear-free. Neodymium magnets, currently the strongest permanent magnets that can be produced, are used to generate the magnetic field in the motor. However, to achieve greater independence from raw material prices and geopolitical developments, the SCT E- motor can also be designed without magnets for greater independence. Thanks to the unique contactless transformer developed by MAHLE, the magnet-free variant would also be wear-free and run efficiently, while only requiring slightly more assembly space.
