Donut Lab claims the world’s most power-dense electric motor

Donut Lab, a subsidiary of Finland-based Verge Motorcycles, claims to have a motor with the highest power density of any such unit on the planet.

At CES 2025, Donut Lab announced it had achieved this feat with donut-shaped motors designed to be integrated with a vehicle’s wheels and tires. This adds unsprung mass, which may make tuning for ride and handling difficult, but Donut claims that is minimized by the sunshine weight of its motors.

The corporate plans to supply a family of five motors for various designs, including a 21-inch-diameter automotive version that produces 844 hp and three,171 pound-feet. Nevertheless, it also weighs 88 kilos—still a number of unsprung mass. For a similar weight, Donut Lab also has a 21-inch motor designed for semi trucks that produces 268 hp and a pair of,212 lb-ft.

Moving down in size, a 17-inch motorcycle motor that weighs 46 kilos produces a claimed 201 hp and 885 lb-ft. There’s also a 12-inch, 17-pound scooter motor rated at 20 hp and 221 lb-ft. Donut Lab even has a 4.7-inch motor designed for drones that generates 4 hp and 14 lb-ft.

By extracting more power from a smaller package, Donut Lab believes it can lower the fee of producing electric vehicles by utilizing less material. To make that easier, it’s offering these motors as a part of a whole platform including battery packs, control units, and software—even though it hasn’t confirmed how these motors stand with respect to efficiency.

In-wheel motors aren’t recent. Porsche recently reminded us that it has been working on them for a very long time—over a century, the truth is. Even Ferrari has considered a form of in-wheel motors.

Donut Lab electric motors

But attempts to commercialize in-wheel motors have been mixed. They’re currently utilized in at the very least one Chinese-market sedan, but startups Lightyear and Lordstown Motors stalled before getting them into U.S.-market production vehicles. That leaves Aptera, which had initially seen in-wheel motors as an efficiency play for its electric 3-wheeler.

With regards to conventional motors, Lucid has the lightest in a production EV, at about 68 kilos each. That automaker’s core propulsion technology is about to be utilized in future Aston Martin EVs.