Author: telliott

AEM Leads Project To Establish UK Supply Chain For EV Drivetrains

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  • AEM to lead Coil to Core: Supply Chain for Net Zero CO2 (COCO2) project
  • The COCO2 project will aim to establish a PEMD supply chain in the UK
  • The company’s involvement in the initiative demonstrates its commitment to achieving key industrial and environmental goals

Advanced Electric Machines (AEM) will lead the Coil to Core: Supply Chain for Net Zero CO2 (COCO2) project. The project, which will run from January 2022 to January 2025, will seek to develop a Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) supply chain in the UK.

The newly established supply chain will develop cost-effective material supply and manufacturing of new high strength steels using innovative mass production processes. This will deliver patented lamination designs that can be stacked into novel rotor and stator sub-assemblies, allowing the mass production of more efficient and sustainable electric machines. These machines can be used across a wide range of applications in the transport, energy, and industrial sectors.

Throughout the project, AEM will be working alongside partnering organisations such as Tata Steel, the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), and Coventry University. The project is funded by the Driving the Electric Revolution challenge at UK Research and Innovation.The project team’s goal is to establish a supply chain with a clear end-to-end route to market for electric vehicle drivetrains. To ensure the supply chain is both attractive to the market and profitable, the team will also undertake production costing and value chain analysis.

The COCO2 project is a clear demonstration of AEM’s commitment to achieving key industrial and environmental goals within the UK. Among these is a pledge to support innovation by developing a versatile range of materials, processes, and sub-assemblies. This innovation will produce the basis of more efficient and more sustainable electric machines that exclude the use of rare earth materials and copper.

In accordance with the UK’s drive towards net zero, sustainable routes to electric motor production will be established throughout the project. This, coupled with the development of sustainable electrification solutions, ensures that the initiative falls in line with the Government’s target of achieving a green industrial revolution in the transport, energy and industrial sectors.

James Widmer, CEO of AEM, said: “The growth in the electric vehicle market in recent years has shone a light on the need to bolster the electric vehicle driveline supply chain. The Coil to Core: Supply Chain for Net Zero CO2 project will see AEM and our partners establish a clear path for the mass production of efficient and sustainable electric machines. As a result, the transport, energy and industrial sectors will have an array of more environmentally viable options at their disposal.”

Tackling the sustainability of power electronics

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It wouldn’t be overstating it to say that without power electronics the modern world would grind to a halt.

Power electronics has a role in just about every electrical engineering function that you can imagine. It’s in your mobile phone, it’s in your electric car (if you have one), and there will be a multitude of electronic devices in your home that rely on power electronics.

The question, then, is what on earth is power electronics?

Power electronics uses semiconductor technology to control the flow of electrical energy from a source, such as a battery, to a load, such as a traction motor. In other words, it is a sort of ‘invisible’ technology that makes electrical systems work.

Power electronics is so widely used because it is an incredibly efficient way of converting one form of electrical energy into another. And so it is that these complex pieces of technology are going to be in high demand as we embark on the express EV scale-up that the industry is bracing itself for.

The future of power electronics

Now, there are a number of key technological drivers for power electronics in today’s market: reduced costs, increased efficiency, increased power density, simple and flexible application, environmental tolerance, and life cycle.

The unique challenge of designing power electronics, however, is that improving one design criterion may adversely affect another. For example, if you try to make a system more cost-effective, it might affect the size of the unit and therefore reduce the power density.

However, that’s not to say that the automotive industry shouldn’t strive for better. In an earlier blog, we looked at the global problem of e-waste, to which power electronics is, unfortunately, a contributor. To make progress, we need to develop power electronics that are more sustainable, more affordable, and highly resilient.

The challenge with sustainability is that power electronics systems are made up of a complex cocktail of polymers, ceramics, semi-conductors and metals like copper, aluminium and tin plus small amounts of precious metals such as silver and  gold. All of these materials have different lifecycles, and some are difficult or impractical to recycle.  

The three Rs

The industry’s success in overcoming this challenge will, to a large extent, depend on how it can deliver agains the ‘three Rs’.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Reduce means using less raw material and less energy in our manufacturing. It means using recycled material where possible, replacing difficult-to-recover materials if we can, and making products that are even more energy-efficient.

Reuse means designing power electronics for a longer life, as well as designing them for reuse and remanufacture. Central to this is making systems that are easier to dismantle so that valuable parts can be recovered.

And Recycle simply means we become less reliant on materials that cannot be recovered and recycled.

At Advanced Electric Machines, we strongly believe that this is the path we must take, and the time to accelerate change is now.

The messy business of rare-earth metals

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If you’ve followed our work over the past couple of years, especially during last year’s COP26 summit, you’ll know that we’re not afraid to draw attention to the volatile world of rare-earth metals. In fact, we’ve been banging the drum of discontent ever since we started AEM in 2017.

As a bit of background, most electric vehicles on our roads today use permanent magnet motors. This is because it’s a proven technology and was, until now, thought to be the most efficient means of powering a vehicle. The issue we have with permanent magnet motor technology is that each unit uses some 2kg of rare earth magnets.

THINGS NEED TO CHANGE

There are grave costs to using rare earth metals

The mining of rare earth metals is, in short, damaging to the environment and harmful to those involved. For every single tonne of rare earth metals mined, it’s been reported that up to 1.4 tonnes of radioactive waste can also be produced. Mining 12 tonnes can generate enough acid-containing sewage water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. If you compare rare earth mining to steel production, mining rare earths creates over 11 times more CO2 for every tonne of steel manufactured.

It’s not just the social and environmental issues of rare earth mining that need to be considered. As their name suggests, rare earth metals are only available in low quantities globally due to the highly complex process involved in their extraction. And scarcity, unsurprisingly, translates into a premium price point and a volatile trading market. Between March 2020 and March 2021, the cost of neodymium (a key element in electric motor magnets) increased by 240%. How can vehicle manufacturers scale their models with fluctuations as dramatic as that?

REMOVING RARE EARTHS

The only way to eliminate this problem is to eliminate the rare earths in motors

It’s hard, however, to criticise the practice when it seems that no viable alternative is available. That’s why we’ve spent several years developing our own semi-sinusoidal motor technology that does away with the rare earth magnets that limit an electric motor’s scope.

By removing the magnet in our design, AEM motors can spin twice as quickly as a permanent magnet motor. This makes it up to 12% more efficient and kinder to the environment. We’re also exchanging the copper windings for a compressed aluminium design. It means that our motor is made almost entirely out of steel and aluminium – both of which are easy to recycle through existing channels.

Thankfully, we’re starting to see the awareness around rare-earth mining grow. We’ve seen it not only amongst the major automotive manufacturers and their engineers, but with the rising number of environmentally conscious product buyers, too. We all have an appetite to go green, but it will be all in vain if we don’t remember our duty to do so sustainably.

A Global Issue

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Electronic waste is an increasing problem that no one is talking about

Consider the efforts that have gone into properly disposing of plastic waste. Years of campaigning to rid the world of unnecessary and damaging landfill led to a reformed approach to recycling, with plastic now widely recycled. These efforts that went into making the recycling of plastic waste a global concern massively impacted public attitudes.

Now, generally speaking, electronic waste – or E-waste – is not typically at the forefront of your mind when it comes to landfills and recycling, but, as with plastic, it is a global issue. In 2019 alone, a whopping 53 million tonnes of E-waste was registered, with only 17% of this recycled. Compare this to the recycling rate of plastic in the UK in 2018, where 43.8% of plastic packaging waste was recycled, and you can see a stark difference. Perhaps, then, it is about time that we reassess how we deal with E-waste.

The 83% of electronic waste that was not recycled in 2019 would have either been thrown into landfill or shipped off to other countries and dumped there. For example, the commercial district of Agbogbloshie in Ghana is one of the world’s principal recipients of such waste. E-waste arrives here in its hundreds of thousands of tonnes and has a detrimental impact on the health of the informal workers that are responsible for sorting it. Wishing to clearly emphasise the severity of the matter, Stephen Sicars, an environmental director at the United Nations’ Industrial Development Organization, said that “E-waste is a growing global challenge that poses a serious threat to the environment and human health worldwide”.

ELECTRIC CARS AND E-WASTE

Unless we make a change now, EVs will create an unprecedented volume of E-waste

Unfortunately, with the world reaching unprecedented technological heights, this problem is only going to get worse. In the automotive industry in particular, E-waste is going to be especially troublesome. The global efforts to lower vehicle emissions have seen many countries committing to only producing electric vehicles. In theory, this is good news, but it doesn’t take electronic waste into account; as more EVs are manufactured, the greater the scope is for more E-waste to be produced.

Part of the reason why so little of this waste is recycled is because of its complex structure. The metals, magnets, wiring, and remaining electrical current make it difficult – and even unsafe – to recycle. This is particularly the case with an electric motor, which powers electric vehicles. The motor that is used in the majority of these cars is called a permanent magnet machine, but these require rare earth metals such as neodymium or dysprosium, which can be magnetised to become permanent magnets. On top of this, these motors need a copper coil to enable an electric current to rotate the magnet and create mechanical power.

THE SOLUTION?

We deliver electric motors that are fully recyclable

The process of recycling one of these electric motors is complicated, requiring the removal of the copper coil and magnets before the motor can be recycled. This is not a simple task, and is often deemed too expensive to even attempt, so electric motors are just being thrown into landfill. As was the case with the internal combustion engine, a more environmentally sustainable alternative is required.

AEM’s technology is the solution. Using no rare earth metals and replacing copper with aluminium, our electric motors can be put straight into an arc furnace and melted down, making them fully recyclable and removing the contribution to e-waste. This technology promises to make a huge mark in the automotive industry’s mission to become more environmentally sustainable.

If not a permanent magnet motor, then what?

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HISTORY OF PERMANENT MAGNET MOTORS

The electric vehicle industry has been built on these motors

Permanent magnet machines have been the traction motor of choice for OEMs since the first modern electrified vehicles hit the roads in the late 1990s. At that time, engineers favoured the permanent magnet motor for its efficiency, relative power density and simplicity, and since then an entire electric vehicle industry has grown up around these machines.

The engineers working on those early hybrid vehicles couldn’t have foreseen the issues that mass production of EVs containing permanent magnet motors could cause. Nor could they predict our insatiable need for personal electronics and the pressures these two trends would place on rare earth metal production or levels of electronic waste.

THE PROBLEMS

Permanent magnet motors are environmentally and financially unsustainable

But now we do know the realities of mass-producing permanent magnet traction motors for a burgeoning electric vehicle industry. For each permanent magnet traction motor produced, around 2kg of rare earth material is needed, costing around $200 – although that price is incredibly volatile (it increased 240% in the year up to March 2021).

That means that the production of each traction motor can create around 3kg of radioactive waste and up to 56kg of CO2. Those worrisome figures only become worse when you consider that some forecasts suggest we’ll be producing 128 million EVs per year within the next 20 years. Shockingly, if rare earth metal production keeps pace with this growth, it could be producing enough acidic sewage to fill an additional 21,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools every year.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

So far attempts to remove magnets has meant a compromise on performance and range

So, it’s clear that a different, magnet-free solution is needed for EV traction motors, and fast. But there’s a good reason permanent magnet machines have been favoured over other existing motor technologies so far.

True, some vehicle manufacturers have incorporated induction motors into their electric cars instead, but the result of using this less power-dense solution has meant heavier vehicles and less predictable real-world range.

AEM’S TECHNOLOGY

A new motor technology that is more sustainable, more efficient and higher performing

That’s where AEM’s technology comes in. A semi-sinusoidal machine, AEM’s technology changes how electricity is fed into the coil and swaps the permanent magnets in the rotor for electrical steel.

The result is a motor that is not only more sustainable to produce and dispose of than the permanent magnet machine, it is also more efficient and power dense, while even providing significant safety benefits.

So you see, there really is an alternative to the permanent magnet motor that not only provides performance advantages, but stops us from falling into yet another environmental trap for future generations.

Faster, Further, Lower Cost, Greener

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Why AEM’s motors outperform the rest of the market

AEM’S UNIQUE MOTOR TECHNOLOGIES

Background

AEM’s electric motors are unlike anything else on the market, offering a unique approach to achieving sustainable traction. HDSRM and SSRD traction motors eliminate rare earths, are uniquely recyclable and offer vehicle range improvements over competitors.

This blog describes how AEM’s motors allow customers to go Faster and Further whilst being Lower Cost and Greener.

FASTER

How AEM’s high speed motor technology enables very high-performance vehicles

AEM’s SSRD traction motor is designed to operate at 30,000 revolutions per minute, significantly faster than any motor currently in volume automotive production.

This rotational speed was originally selected as it was shown to form the basis for the most cost-effective possible EV powertrain, however experience has now shown that it can also enable the world’s highest performance electric cars.

Work with partner Bentley has shown that SSRD will allow a high-performance electric vehicle to operate up to the highest speeds without a need for a complex transmission. Removing the transmission makes the vehicle lighter and increases acceleration, to further key components of the highest performance vehicles.

FURTHER

How AEM’s traction technology allows AEM powered vehicles to go further on a single charge

A major commercial vehicle customer has reported that the expect AEM’s HDSRM commercial vehicle traction motor to increase their vehicle range by 10%.

A major passenger vehicle OEM has reported that AEM’s SSRD traction motor will extend their cars range by 15%.

Based on AEM’s modelling and testing to date, this increase in range can be attributed to several key technology factors:

  • AEM’s fundamental motor technology has inherent efficiency advantages through their physics, this is coupled with a trade secret design approach which optimises the motors to meet specific customer’s needs
  • AEM’s compressed aluminium windings reduce high speed losses in the motor, allowing the motor to operate efficiently across the full speed range
  • AEM’s ‘efficiency boost’ technology, used in dual motor systems, allows a single motor to be switched off when it is efficient to do so; this has the effect of significantly increasing the peak efficiency region of powertrain operation

LOWER COST

Why AEM’s Motor technology is inherently lower cost than the competition

Simply put, AEM’s motors eliminate the need for the two most expensive materials used in motor manufacturing; rare earth magnets and copper. As well as achieving the sustainability benefits of eliminating these materials, lowest manufacturing cost is also a significant benefit.

Rare earth magnets are the single most expensive material in a motor, with around 2kg used in a standard traction motor and costing around $100/kg as a base price. Rare earth price volatility however means that even higher base costs can be driven by market forces. However, the benefits go further than this; magnets are very challenging to handle during manufacture. Metals particles want to stick to them, hands may be injured between them, and other metals want to be magnetised by them (potentially ruining production equipment). AEM’s technology eliminates all of these problems.

Further, use of AEM’s compressed aluminium conductors reduces motor conductor costs by circa 90%.

Additionally, there are even greater benefits. AEM’s motors are designed to reduce the overall cost of the electric powertrain. The SSRD motor was initially developed as part of a programme called “Low Cost Electric Drivetrain”, designed to reduce not just the cost of the motor but the system overall. Additional savings are made by ensuring that the motor can:

  • Be driven by cost effective power electronics; SSRD uses at least as cost-effective power electronics as the industry standard interior permanent magnet motor
  • Reduce the size of the battery needed to drive the vehicle; as has already been discussed under “Further” in this blog AEM’s motors offer the potential for up to 15% increase in vehicle range
  • Operate with a lower complexity and therefore lower cost transmission; SSRD is designed to work with a simple, low cost transmission as is discussed under “Faster”.

GREENER

How AEM’s motors are designed to be the world’s most sustainable

AEM was founded in order to develop electric motor solutions which offer true environmental sustainability, something not currently offered in the market.

To achieve this AEM has taken a number of steps in order to make it products as sustainable as possible:

  • HDSRM and SSRD products do not use rare earth magnets, removing the single least sustainable material from the electric motor
  • In production, HEAD will use recycled rare earth magnets; recovered from scrap sources such as used hard disk drives, these magnets are recycled to minimise environmental footprint
  • All motors will use Aluminium Motor windings; this dramatically improves motor recyclability at the end of vehicle life by allowing the motor to be recycled as part of the standard steel recycling root. This is impossible for conventional motors as copper is a contaminant in the steel recycling process
  • AEM seeks ways to improve the sustainability of its operations. For example, waste heat is recovered from motor validation testing in order to heat the AEM factory unit

COP 26: Making power electronics more sustainable

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Professor Mark Johnson graduated from the University of Cambridge with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering in 1986. Since then, it’s fair to say he’s put that qualification to effective use. Mark led the UK academic community, as Director of the EPSRC Centre for Power Electronics and was leader of the Advanced Propulsion Centre Power Electronics Spoke. He is Power Electronics Director for AEM and holds a personal Chair at the University of Nottingham.

Mark’s personal research expertise is in power devices, power electronics packaging, thermal management, reliability and integration. He also has considerable experience of managing large and complex technical projects involving industry and academic partners.

In his thought-provoking address at our COP26 event, Mark will lift the lid on the challenges the automotive sector faces when it comes to producing power electronics systems that are sustainable, affordable and resilient.

Setting out this extremely complex issue in layman’s terms, Mark will explain the critical function performed by power electronics in electric vehicle powertrains, before considering the rapid scale-up in production that is required over the coming decade.

This presentation will demonstrate that not all EV powertrains are made equal, and not all EVs are truly ‘green’ at all. Until rare earth mining practices are stopped, and a more serious approach to recycling is adopted, the production of power electronics will continue to contribute to the mounting global e-waste issue.

Mark believes, however, that with some innovation and commitment, the power electronics systems of the future can be sustainable, cost-effective, and produced in the volumes the industry needs.

For ideas from some of the automotive and engineering sectors’ brightest minds, be sure to join us for N.EAST at 15:00 on 10 November at COP26 in Glasgow or virtually via COP26’s YouTube live channel.

Understanding sustainability in the CV sector with David Thackray, Sales & Marketing Director at Tevva

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Working with Tevva since 2016 to bring its ground-breaking truck to the UK and Europe, David Thackray’s experience spans road haulage contracting, international strategy consulting and market research.

With a Master’s in Business Administration, a transport manager’s license and a current Class 1 HGV licence; David combines a theoretical and practical understanding of the disparate pressures and requirements faced by fleets. This makes him uniquely qualified to demonstrate how the environmental, operational and commercial imperatives of de-carbonising road transport can be simultaneously satisfied.

In light of this, David Thackray will be speaking at our COP26 event, Novel Electrification through Advanced Sustainable Technologies (N.EAST), on 10 November 2021. In this session, David will provide a high-level overview of the electric truck market and discuss the latest trends, technologies and innovations in the sector which are key to making the commercial vehicle industry truly sustainable.

Last year, the global electric truck market was valued at $1.15 billion and is expected to grow to $14.19 billion by 2027 and with the United Kingdom and Europe committed to a target of net zero emissions by 2050. Earlier this year, Tevva launched its BEV – the first British-built 7.5-tonne electric truck intended for mass production in the UK, positioning Britain as a global leader in the electric truck revolution.

David is uniquely positioned to address the importance of making the whole supply chain economically sustainable. He has a thorough understanding of how today’s technology is transforming the electric vehicle sector to become safer, greener and more efficient.

For ideas from some of the automotive and engineering sectors’ brightest minds, be sure to join us for N.EAST at 15:00 on 10 November at COP26 in Glasgow or virtually via COP26’s YouTube live channel.

James on the Fully Charged Podcast

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Our very own James Widmer, Founder and CEO of Advanced Electric Machines, talks all things electric motors with Robert Llewellyn on the Fully Charged Podcast. In this episode James explains what is actually inside them, the common misunderstandings and how to think even bigger when it comes to the sustainability of electric vehicles.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdpLhmdd_eA&t=2306s

COP 26: making EV motors be faster, travel further and be greener

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When James Widmer took up his PhD at Newcastle University, he could never have known that less than ten years later he would have developed a technology with the potential to save the world. However, that’s how AEM’s unique, highly sustainable EV motor technology got its start, and how the now Prof Widmer came to be AEM’s founder and CEO.

In developing this technology, James – and in time a team of AEM engineers – knew that a truly sustainable EV motor had to make improvements to existing technology in several areas. Not only did it have to clean up the EV motor supply chain and be easily recycled, it also needed to be more efficient and better performing in the vehicle. In short, it needed to be faster, travel further and be greener than the internal combustion engine technology it was replacing.

An entirely new technology, AEM’s motor does away with rare earth magnets and copper, which is crucial when it comes to addressing all three of the criteria it needs to meet.

By not using magnets in the motor’s rotor, for example, AEM is able to let the motor spin faster as it does not lose performance at the higher temperatures this generates. Unlike traditional motors, it is also able to ‘coast’, meaning that it uses less power when the vehicle is maintaining a steady speed or decelerating. These are both characteristics that allow for a more efficient motor.

Meanwhile, its green credentials are clear. By not using rare earth magnets, AEM is not relying on a problematic and volatile supply chain. (You can find out just how damaging rare earth mining can be to the environment by reading our previous blog, COP26: Creating a sustainable passenger car solution).

By removing copper from the motor’s stator and replacing it with aluminium, AEM is also making the motor easier to recycle at end of life. Rather than copper needing to be removed by hand before the casing is recycled, the whole AEM motor can be smelted as scrap, with the steel and aluminium separating naturally.

For ideas from some of the automotive and engineering sectors’ brightest minds, be sure to join us for N.EAST at 15:00 on 10 November at COP26 in Glasgow or virtually via COP26’s YouTube live channel.