Porsche built its repute with internal-combustion sports cars, but on the turn of the twentieth century Ferdinand Porsche, whose son Ferry would later start the sports-car brand, tinkered with electric motors—including in-wheel hub motors.
The primary electric-vehicle boom occurred on the turn of the twentieth century, before internal combustion established itself because the dominant technology. And on Apr. 4, 1900, an EV that the then 24-year-old Porsche helped develop was unveiled on the Paris World’s Fair.
Having previously a complete electric automobile in 1898, Porsche designed electric motors to be integrated with the front hubs of a vehicle built by the Austrian firm of Jason Lohner & Co. in a period of only 10 weeks. Each motor generated 2.4 hp, which got the vehicle, often called a Lohner-Porsche, as much as a top speed of 19.8 mph. Besides 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 trucks and buses in addition to passenger cars. These motors were intended to be used with lead-acid batteries—typical of the time—that provided a claimed range of as much as 31 miles.
Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus hybrid
Porsche also designed an all-wheel drive electric race automobile named La Toujours Contente (French for “the one who’s at all times comfortable”), with one 13.8-hp motor powering each wheel. However the engineer’s hub motors saw essentially the most use in hybrids—starting with the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus (Latin for “at all times alive”), which combined front hub motors with a gasoline engine.
Lohner and Porsche eventually applied the identical hybrid layout to about 300 production vehicles, including 40 for the Viennese fire department, in addition to assorted taxis and personal passenger cars.
Greater than a century later, in-wheel motors are still attracting interest, although adoption for production vehicles has been slow. Chinese automaker Dongfeng claimed to be the primary to make use of them in a fully-homologated passenger automobile in 2023, although they were also intended for the Lightyear 0 and Lordstown Endurance before production of each vehicle stalled.
Aptera can be including hub motors in what it claims will probably be a super-efficient 3-wheeler, and patent filings from Ferrari, Hyundai, and Toyota indicate they’re being studied by established automakers as well.
This Article First Appeared At www.greencarreports.com
