YASA’s Second Output Record This Year

Dean Sigler Announcements, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Mercedes-Benz, with its YASA (Yokeless and Segmented Armature) motor, has achieved a second world record this year for power density.  Pulling 1,000 horsepower from a 12 kilogram (xx pound) motor seems a bit incredible, but Mercedes has dynomometer tests to prove it. This efffort will be in production cars within a year, according to Mercedes, and the aircraft version, produced by a division called Evolito, will probably follow shortly thereafter. Even while under development at Oxford University, the motor showed great promise, as well as great torque.   This blog included the video below in 2010, with a Lotus 7 copy being flung about handily with two 40 kilowatt (53.6 horsepower) YASAs driving the rear wheels.  At that time, power was limited to 75 kilowatts (100.5 hp.), although designers believed 150 kW (201 hp.) was possible.   That early motor weighed 11 kilograms, or 23.2 pounds, one pound per three limited horsepower, one pound per six horsepower at the design limit.  As …

Evolito and ElectroFlight

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

A Profusion of Names  Evolito is the new name for YASA motors that fly.  YASA (Yokeless and Segmented Armature) motors are a product of Oxford University research, and have become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz.  Mercedes is now creating and marketing a line of electric vehicles using the YASA motors.  But what of aeronautical applications? With that in mind, Mercedes spun out Evolito, taking YASA skyward with “high-power density, light-weight electric motors and controllers for aerospace applications.”  Evolito’s Managing Director, Gareth Morris, explains, “We’re building the future of electric flight with motors that have the highest power and torque densities in class with the ability to manufacture at scale, whilst achieving efficiencies of over 98%.” Although their web site claims the YASA configuration is a “revolutionary new approach” to motor design, it’s a careful revamping of the axial flux technology invented almost 40 years ago by Cedric Lynch, a self-taught English inventor. Evolito’s axial-flux motors contain significant improvements.  Two motors …

ACCELL: A (Mostly) British Coalition Going for 300 MPH

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Rolls-Royce is perhaps the epitome of Britishness, going back to 1904, when Henry Royce, founder of a successful mechanical/electrical business, met Charles Rolls, a successful car dealer in London.  Together, the founded the company which came to be known as Rolls-Royce.  By 1906, their Silver Ghost was known as “the best car in the world.”  That quality was inherent in their first aircraft engine, the Eagle, “providing some half of the total horsepower used in the air war by the allies.”  It provided the power in 1919 for the first direct flight across the Atlantic and the first flight from England to Australia – both in Vickers Vimy aircraft.  This led to racing success, with early V-12 engines by R-R powering Schneider Cup racers in the 1930’s, leading to the Merlin, which powered Hawker Hurricanes, Vickers Spitfires, and P-51 Mustangs.  Their current ACCELL project hopes to continue that tradition. Rolls-Royce would love to have another round of victories to continue …