What are hub motors?

If you've read our main article on electric motors, you'll know the basic idea of turning stored electricity
into motive power: feed an electric current through tightly coiled wire that sits between the poles of a
magnet and the coil spins around making a force that can turn a wheel and drive a machine.

Most electric-powered vehicles (electric cars, electric bicycles, and wheelchairs) use onboard batteries
and a single, fairly ordinary electric motor to power either two or four wheels. But some of the latest
electric cars and electric bicycles work a different way. Instead of having one motor powering all the
wheels using gears or chains, they build a motor directly into the hub of each wheelso the motors and
wheels are one and the same thing. That's what we mean by a hub motor.

How does a hub motor differ from an ordinary motor?

The basic idea is just the same. In an ordinary motor, you have a hollow, outer, ring-shaped permanent
magnet that stays static (sometimes called the stator) and an inner metallic core that rotates inside it
(called the rotor). The spinning rotor has an axle running through the middle that you use to drive a
machine. But what if you hold the axle firmly so it can't rotate and switch on the motor? Then the rotor
and the stator have no choice but to swap roles: the normally static rotor stays still while the stator
spins around it. Try it with an electric toothbrush. Instead of holding the plastic case of your toothbrush
(which, broadly speaking, connects to the static part of an electric motor), try holding only the bristles
and then turn on the power. It's quite tricky to do, because the brush moves so fast, but if you do it right
you'll find the handle slowly rocks back and forth. This is essentially what happens in a hub motor. You
connect the central, normally rotating axle to the static frame of a bicycle or the chassis of a car. When
you switch on the power, the outer part of the motor rotates, becoming a wheel (or wheels) that
powers the vehicle forward.

How does a brushless DC (BLDC) motor work?

Top: Photo showing the outer case of a brushless DC motor or BLDC. Bottom: Photo showing the inside,
inner component parts of the same motor.

Ordinary electric motors use a mechanical device called a commutator and two contacts called carbon
brushes to reverse the electric current periodically and ensure the axle keeps turning in the same
direction.

Hub motors are typically brushless motors (sometimes called brushless direct current motors or BLDCs),
which replace the commutator and brushes with half-a-dozen or more separate coils and an electronic
circuit. The circuit switches the power on and off in the coils in turn creating forces in each one that
make the motor spin. Since the brushes press against the axle of a normal motor, they introduce
friction, slow it down, make a certain amount of noise, and waste energy. That's why brushless motors
are often more efficient, especially at low speeds. Getting rid of the brushes also saves having to replace
them every so often when friction wears them down.

Here are some photos of a typical brushless DC motor. First, look at the fully assembled motor shown in
the top picture. In a normal motor, you'd expect the inner coil to rotate (it's called the rotor) and the
outer magnet to stay static (that's called the stator). But in this motor, the roles are reversed: the inner
part with the coils is static and the gray magnet spins around it. Now look inside and you can see exactly
how it works: the electronic circuit sends power round the nine copper coils in turn, making the gray
outer case (which is a magnet split into a number of sections, bent round into a circle) spin around the
copper coils and circuit board (which remain static).

What are the advantages of hub motors?

It depends whether you're talking about an electric bicycle or an electric car. Adding a hub motor and
batteries to a bicycle is a mixture of pro and con: you increase the bicycle's weight quite considerably
but, in return, you get a pleasant and effortless ride whenever you don't feel like pedaling. Where
electric cars are concerned, the benefits are more obvious. The weight of the metal in a typical car
(including the engine, gearbox, and chassis) is perhaps 10 times the weight of its occupants, which is one
reason why cars are so very inefficient. Swap the heavy engine and gearbox for hub motors and
batteries and you have a lighter car that uses energy far more efficiently. Getting rid of the engine
compartment also frees up a huge amount of space for passengers and their luggageyou can just stow
the batteries behind the back seat!

Vehicles powered by hub motors are a whole lot simpler (mechanically less complex) than normal ones.
Suppose you want to reverse. Instead of using elaborate arrangements of gears, all you have to do is
reverse the electric current. The motor spins backward and back you go! What about four wheel drive?
That's quite an expensive option on a lot of vehiclesyou need more gears and complicated drive
shaftsbut it's very easy to sort out with hub motors. If you have a hub motor in each of a car's four
wheels, you get four-wheel drive automatically. In theory, it's easy enough to make the four motors turn
at slightly different speeds (to help with cornering and steering) or torque (to move you through muddy
or uneven terrain).

What are the problems with hub motors?

Handling

Hub motors are bigger, bulkier, and heavier than ordinary wheels and change the handling of an electric
car or bike: they increase the un-sprung mass (the mass not supported by the suspension), giving more
shock and vibration, poorer handling, and a bumpier ride.
Torque

Arrangement of brushless motor, circuit board, gearbox, and wire connections in a typical electric
bicycle hub motor.

Another problem is delivering just the right amount of torque (turning force). A gasoline engine works
best turning over quickly (making lots of revolutions per minute), no matter what speed you're actually
doing on the road. You use a gearbox to convert the engine's high revs into high torque (and low speed)
or high speed (and low torque) depending on whether you're starting off from a standstill, racing along
the freeway, driving slowly uphill, or whatever. Hub motors have to be able to produce any combination
of speed and torque without a gearbox; they usually work by "direct drive." But here's the snag: they sit
inside the hub, at the very center of a relatively large bike wheel. If you turn the center of a wheel, its
diameter works as a lever, multiplying the speed at the rim but reducing the torque by the same amount
(see our article on how wheels work for an explanation). To get enough torque, you need quite a
powerful motorbut not so powerful that it accelerates you too quickly and jerkily or snaps your
spokes!

Hub motors typically achieve more torque by increasing the hub size quite significantly (a bigger stator
and rotor make more torque than smaller ones); you can see from the electric bike photo up above that
the powered hub in an electric bike is considerably bigger than the unpowered hub in an ordinary bike.
Some hub motors boost their torque with internal gearboxes (typically an arrangement of planetary
(epicyclic) gears in between the stator and the rotor), but since that adds weight, cost, mechanical
complexity, and potential unreliability, many do not. Bigger torque brings an added problem: you need
to be sure the rest of your wheel is strong enough to cope with the twisting forces a hub motor can
deliver, particularly if you're converting something like an ordinary bicycle wheel into a powered wheel.
The spokes on an electric bike are shorter and leave the hub at a tighter angle, which can stress them
further. Suppose you mount an electric motor on the hub of a basic bike and switch on the power. Since
you weigh quite a lot and there's plenty of friction between the tire and the ground, the motor could
simply bend the spokes instead of moving you along the ground! So an electric bicycle typically needs
stronger wheels (perhaps with stronger and more elastic spokes, different positioning of spoke holes, a
thicker rim, or some other fix) than an ordinary one.

Hub motors are inherently heavier and bulkier than driven wheels.

Until we make magic carbon nanotube superconductors en masse, motors are essentially chunks of
steel and copper, both very heavy elements. What happens when you increase the weight of a wheel
two- or -threefold is a drastic increase in the unsprung weight of a vehicle, or weight that is not held up
by a suspension. For those of you in the know about vehicle suspension engineering, unsprung weight
negatively affects the ride and comfort of a vehicle. If you just drop hub motors into a vehicle previously
endowed with indirectly driven wheels, expect a change in ride performance.

This is more of a concern for passenger cars and sport vehicles than anything else, as most small EVs
such as bikes and scooter won't have suspensions at all. However, the keyword here is small. You might
have gathered from my other instructable that some times it's all but impossible to simply fit a larger
motor in an enclosed space. A hub motor will inevitably take up more space in the vehicle wheel. This
matters less for larger wheels and vehicles. The MINI QED and Mitsubishi MIEV are example of car-sized
hub motors that have been well-integrated into the vehicle design through some pretty serious re-
engineering of how the wheels attach to the car frame. You might have to do the same for your scooter,
bike, or couch.

A hub motor powertrain will generally produce less torque than an indirect-drive system

Don't expect any tire smoke from your hub motors. An indirect drive motor, such as one geared to the
wheels through a transmission, has the advantage of torque multiplication. This is how a 400
horsepower diesel engine in a semi-truck can haul itself and 80,000 more pounds up a mountain road,
but a 400hp Corvette could not do the same - the semi engine goes through a painstakingly complex
arrangement of gears to transmit many thousands of foot-pounds of torque at the drive wheels. A
Corvette is light and fast, and hence the 400 horsepower in its engine is mostly speed.

From physical mechanics, power output is a product of both torque and speed. Due to curiosities in the
laws of nature, it is much easier to make a fast but low torque motor than a slow and high-torque one,
power output levels being equal.
As it relates to motors, this is why your typical drill motor spins at upwards of 30,000 RPM, but you only
get a few hundred RPM out at the screwdriver bit. The drill motor has been engineered to produce
maximum power at very high rotational speeds, which is sent through a gear reduction to crank your
drill bits hard enough to do this.

Hub motor drivetrains will generally be less electrically efficient than an indirect drive system

It is certainly true that hub motors bypass practically all the mechanical losses associated with a clutch,
transmission, axles, and gears that you typically find in a vehicle powertrain. In fact, drive components
alone can eat up 15 to 20% of the power produced by the engine. Imagine if that were gone - what
could you do with 15 to 20% more power?

A hub motor will typically have a torque-produced to force-on-the-ground transmission of almost 1. The
torque of the motor only has to go through the tire, with its rolling friction and deformation forces. But
what hurts the hub motor is electrical efficiency.

A motor is a transducer. Input electrical power and out comes mechanical power - usually. Electrical
power is defined as

Pe = V * I

where V is the voltage across the motor and I is the current flowing into the motor. V has unit volts and I
has unit Amperes. Mechanical power is

Pm = T *

where T is the torque output in Newton-Meters and is rotational velocity in radians per second (units
1 / time, because radians are unit less!)

It is perfectly within reason to be inputting electrical power to the motor but get no rotation out. This is
called stall or locked rotor condition, and it kills motors. This occurs when T is not enough to overcome
the forces pushing back against a motor - think of driving up a really steep hill.

In this case, your efficiency is precisely zero. Mechanical power out is zero, but electrical power in is
nonzero.

While it is true that both motors must start the vehicle from standstill, and thus have zero efficiency for
a split second, the fact that hub motors must operate continuously at high T and low is the
distinguishing factor. Other laws of physics dictate limits of torque output, which I will get to shortly. A\
hub motor has to draw a higher current for the same torque output, and current is what causes heating
in wires (not voltage). The more current there is, the more heat is generated. This is called Joule heating
and is governed by the power law Pj = I * R. It is a square law: double the current, quadruple the heat.

Now you see why hub motors are less efficient electrically than indirect drive motors. Hub motors are
low speed creatures, and will inevitably spend much of their lives at or near stall condition. This occurs
whenever the vehicle is moving at low speed or accelerating. A hub motor will see more moments of
low or zero efficiency than an indirectly driven, geared motor. The bottom line is, prepared to see a
decrement in battery life if you swap your existing drive system with a hub motor.