Mercedes acquired Yasa (UK) couple of years ago and now getting up to the speed in the production.
Here is a nice video that explains axial flux motors with a factory visit
https://youtu.be/B2Hl4c1iZK0?si=VfDYARyuaPVj1nKm
They are so, so, small.
Here is a nice video that explains axial flux motors with a factory visit
https://youtu.be/B2Hl4c1iZK0?si=VfDYARyuaPVj1nKm
They are so, so, small.
This doesn’t seem to apply to AI for some reason. It keeps generating incorrect results after incorrect results, yet people continue to trust its output.
I don’t know what to make of this.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dave-Gary/author/B0BY6Z6HP8/al...
Human trust differs from mathematical trust. And branding / marketing abuses the ambiguity.
There is no shame in a "likely to hallucinate" model that can be instantiated 1,000 times across 1,000 different machines spread throughout our planet. So, human trust is broken by machine trust.
Take a look at the Forbes billionaires list and some of their statements. Or maybe at the politician fact checkers. If only being wrong damaged reputations.
Basically it is a pretty version of a dumbed down partially incorrect answer. With a knowledgeable user it would be very good, but he has no idea he is wrong. I’m not sure what Dunning Kreguer with graphics should be called.
Then, predictably, finding the collection of supporting details + vetting the content in question.
This is an issue we, technology-folk, ought to help guide our non-tech-co-folk through engaging with, BTW. Our responsibility is rising with tech becoming more deeply entrenched / required for society's operations.
What did you like most about it?
To get something better I expect more than a one-shot is needed, and the knowledge to guide it in the right way.
It’s possible to actually learn something from this, whereas the one fable created is just slop with pretty colours.
Also I have "The Way Things Work" on my desk right now and can't help but wonder, could you adapt some of the pages of the book this way? It seems like exactly the kind of content that would benefit from such 3D (interactive) visual explainers.
Feel free to steal! This was one shot with Claude Code. You can take it and adopt it to your need
I assumed it's based on a three.js template due to the `Rendered live with three.js · Drag anywhere to orbit the model` kind of showcase but unfortunately that's not linked. I also imagine the 3D models are more that primitives (at least the arrows showcasing the flow) but I don't know where they came from, if that are also from a template or repository or if they are generated from a tube mesh.
So... I'm genuinely grateful that you took the time to share but I don't think I can do something with this except restarting from scratch, especially if it's one-shot.
I'd suggest, if you don't mind the extra effort, that you add a ReadMe.md in the repository to clarify how you did this, at least model name, version and prompt.
If I had time and making a polished web page was my goal I could probably do better but this was not the point!
Published: https://banagale.com/the-way-the-motor-works/
Source: https://github.com/banagale/the-way-the-motor-works
It lacks cave people but has the woolys.
I’m sure folks would be interested even in a blog post comparing just this process with different Anthropic models if that’s something you do and need a content idea. :)
---
Can you make a version of this that is more in the style of "the way things work" the cool inventions book from the 90s with cavepeople and wooly mamoths and that illustration asthetic?
https://github.com/mohsen1/axial-flux-motor-explainer
If able, expand on the abilities of the page as requested in this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475428
---
So ya, that was a one shot to build.
Just as impressive was its ability to publish the source and get the version up on my personal site. That was also a one shot but aided by context and skills I have available for these purposes.
E.g. for example for a given electrical frequency and decent radial flux synchronous machine, power density is quite static and torque density can actually be dialed quite freely from 2-pole machine (turboset in gas turbine running on the grid at 3600 rpm (or 3000 rpm outside NA and some Pacific Islands) to 40(+) (example deployed at Hoover dam, 180 rpm). At those higher pole counts, the center of the rotor is no longer electromagnetically active, because the magnetic field lines keep to a narrow ring only about as thick as each pole is wide. Unfortunately it's mechanically not that trivial to handle a cylindrical shell with a small air gap (this needs to be significantly smaller (about at least 10x) than the pole width) when using substantial torque and speed.
Circumferential velocity is practically limited by hoop strength of whatever the outer region of the rotor is made of, even if it's all very nicely balanced, because eventually the magnetic armature flux source (wires or magnets) will fly out.
Higher electrical frequencies limit the field winding core's magnetic permeability (magnetic field/force strength amplification relative to vacuum, for same electrical current) which hurts efficiency by dropping the useful mechanical power component of field voltage while the voltage resulting from the current (that needs to happen to cause the magnetic field in the direction of movement that causes the mechanical force) due to wiring resistance stays. (I think the permeability gives the ratio between voltage and current for otherwise identical mechanical load conditions and winding shape?)
Thinner wires have less fill factor because the insulation has to stay the same thickness as per-winding voltage stays, but magnetically inactive terminations are less wasteful (for losses and mass) when a decent number of effective turns (>>1, think >10~50 for most of the benefits) are used.
Note while the armature necessarily has an even number of poles in it's construction (north/south), the field is not forced to that.
Indeed, the iirc most smooth torque (under practical mechanical feasibility limitations and without undue sacrifice of efficiency) results from having a prime number (of field windings, in WYE-style connection) exactly one off from the armature pole count. Note that for low losses all these torque-smoothing techniques _require_ only a single electrically directly driven winding in each slot (per mechanical field pole) and with that only GCD(field_slots, (armature_poles / 2)) windings get to share an electrical half-bridge (one single wire going to a single voltage-output terminal on the electronics board; note mainstream BLDCs have 3 of these, classic fridge compressors have 2, and modern stepper motors (e.g. 3D printer) have 4).
Any time you have multiple windings driven by different electrical source voltages you're wasting heat in the winding because the lowest-loss would require all conductor in the slot to to perfectly evenly share current.
There's just one problem with that: you need a nearby slot with exactly opposite phase to even possibly use more than a single (half) turn of "winding" in the slot.
If the voltage is still enough to not loose too much in the connections, you can use transistors developed for efficiently powering modern computer chips from comfortable voltages like 12V, but even then a "winding" has to be much longer than an armature pole to mitigate the losses of spreading the return current sideways to where a slot carries the current in the reverse direction. Once the voltage at the transistor is over around 10V the benefits of more precise control of the field magnetization to the armature position (and how the shapes distort the field lines from anything that would look like a sine wave) could be useful. In theory that'd also provide direct access to electronically control the air gap (well, net force normal to the air gap "surface") which _could_ be an alternative to mechanical bearings for very thin-shell constructions. See maglev trains for a pretty practical application of using an electric motor to also levitate the "rotor" in a place where a mechanical bearing ("train wheels + bogies") performs poorly.
I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.
ETA: Internal combustion engines half a century ago had an efficiency of 20%, now they're at 40%. That cuts the fuel you need to carry in half. Electric engines are near 100%, and as I said, going from 90% to 95% efficiency cuts required battery by a bit more than 5%, so peanuts.
Same with going from 99% to 99.5% efficiency. It still reduces the cooling needed by half.
But the motor is not the only thing that needs to be cooled. It’s mainly the battery, which has a narrow operating range. The power electronics that convert AC to DC also need to be cooled.
So you’re halving the cooling needs of the motor, which is nice but small compared to the other two. And even then, total cooling doesn’t impact range that much compared to warming the battery in cold climates.
I think you’ve overstated your case.
If we halve waste-heat generation for a practical widget enough times, then we won't need liquid cooling for that widget at all. If the trend continues and gets good enough, then maybe we can get all the way to a complete passive-cooling snoozefest.
That's pretty boring, but boring is good. The systems we use every day without a thought because they boringly Just Work are, perhaps, our greatest successes.
> I think the cited weight loss comes from energy efficiency gains leading to less battery capacity needed.
So, no, the efficiency gains of electrical engines do not lead to significantly less battery capacity needed.
drop in a tiny, powerful electric motor and a small battery (crammed in whatever location is best for weight distribution), and then wire up a little genny powered off your existing fuel tank that can jump in as a range extender
Series hybrids are great for packaging, though. Parallel and series-parallel commit to certain packaging decisions like having a transmission, or a long, monolithic unit, because it's the mechanical coupling that buys them smaller motors and potentially better efficiency. Series hybrids don't care about any of that, so even though you have bigger motors and potentially higher losses, you have more freedom over where things go.
Personally, I think there's a massive untapped market in converting old cars to hybrid engines. You wouldn't try to upgrade the old engine, you'd design a smaller and more power dense package and rip all of the original gear out. Because electrification lets you cut the size of the engine down so aggressively, this is probably a feasible strategy. As you pointed out, series hybrids are probably best suited to this because of their packaging flexibility. As others have pointed out, there's tremendous potential there for replicating original driving characteristics using software and the electric motor. And if we're being honest, off-road vehicles probably should get rid of the transmission and low range, because electric motor torque is just better. As is, the potential for cars is enormous, but we're getting the worst possible outcomes thanks to legislation.
for my sailboat I am getting rid of a 300lbs diesel and a 30gallon fuel tank with a 45lbs PMAC.
That means I have opened up about 465lbs for batteries.
Now, with a sailboat you're never truly out of range -- but the point stands : these things are so much lighter than ICEs on average that there is a lot of opportunity even with battery weight as it is (and it's getting better daily).
BYD can be lighter because they skip on safety gear and proper structural elements - in my experience.
> BYD can be lighter because they skip on safety gear and proper structural elements - in my experience.
Also, the only cars I’ve ever ridden on that the top of my head literally touches the headliner while sitting in the back seat. Other than that, they seem good?
In this Atto 3, I've ridden in the back a few times and my head does not touch the headliner. I'm 170cm.
The suspension issues seem like a common theme though, they aren’t built as sturdily as most cars on that front.
So a reasonable 75kWh battery pack is going to weigh around 300kg and in future around 200kg. This is... not a lot, actually. To a point where shaving off 20-30 kg from the electric motor weight is going to result in a noticeable performance/price difference.
Teslas also don't have "crazy" weight. Model 3 is 1700kg and a comparable (in size) Ford Focus is 1300kg.
400 kg == 881 lbs, and that is their lightest model with lowest range.
Newer model Tundras are over 5k lbs, but that is also crazy.
Tesla Model 3. Curb Weight: 3721 lb [2]
The Tesla model S (actually more equivalent to the M3) is over 4500 lbs [https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2026/features-specs/].
No one is realistically saving weight by switching to batteries. Because batteries are heavy for the energy and gasoline is hella energy dense.
I looked a bit on doing the same, but came to the conclusion that it will be expensive to fulfil racing rules requiring the boat to be able to maintain speed for 5 hours ie around 25-30 NM range.
As it is now, I have about 500 NM diesel range on my boat, which is basically 3-4 days continuous runtime. Cutting it down to 25nm and 5 hours requires minimally 100kWh.
For a blue water boat, 500 NM is not quite acceptable, but can be fixed with jerrycans for a couple of dollars. An all electric blue water boat would clock in at an unrealistic 2MWh of batteries with a weight at least 20 metric tonnes. 10x the load capacity of my boat.
Don't forget rudder and keel - especially if sailing off the coast of western europe...
[0] https://www.westmarine.com/bg-h3000-paddlewheel-sensor-w-pla...
https://www.thedrive.com/news/jeep-tells-4xe-hybrid-owners-t...
Cd will never be the dominating factor at speeds which do not produce significant aerodynamic drag.
That helped it sink in, thank you
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoTU9_iCGa6i_C38pwQyg0pBG...
It’s the punchy little m10 motor, 4 speed transmission, and incredibly low curb weight that make these cars fun to drive. You lose all that with an electric conversion.
As an aside, the most powerful F1 engine ever put on the track was made by modifying the little 4-banger m10 found in the BMW 2002. Fun fact.
Supposedly BMW lacked a dyno that went high enough so it's an educated guess what the actual hp was, but definitely over 1,300hp... from a 4-cylinder (turbo charged, and only lasted a few laps, but still) engine!
AKA the 4 speed transmission I mentioned :)
But yes, the vibration, sound, and feel of the incredibly simple (as in stripped down, not unsophisticated) mechanics around you all very much contribute to the special feeling of driving these cars.
My 1976 BMW 2002 is actually my first car. I used to drive it to high school more than half my life ago, and I still drive it today. I’ve driven some other classic cars, luxury and sport, and simply nothing feels like a 2002. Just a beautiful, balanced, timeless design.
There are so few of these cars on the road anymore that I think very little progress is to be made on emissions levels by converting them to electric, especially when you consider that you’re ruining the driving experience.
That seems like a pretty cool cheat-code to get more power. Perhaps it will mean you will start having cars with more distance from the ground to accommodate the large dia motor wheels.
The visuals didn't show much, and I learnt a lot more from one of the YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCO633KE7RA) posted below.
It's neat that a whole interactive deck can be produced without effort. But it's just not very interesting.
Stuff like this reminds me that we still need a human in the loop to edit, to improve, to advance.
Auto-from-scratch just doesn't really achieve anything of actual value.
Is that right? One could get ~200hp from something the size and mass of a small dog?
WOW, pretty cool!! :-)
Esp.if you scroll etc. Impressive.
When these hopefully go to the next generation Formula E cars, we’ll see some crazy improvements in cornering. The newest generation already has active 4WD. I imagine this can bring even better torque adjustment improvements.
So, basically '60s Formula 1. Might be fun to watch. We'd certainly see some crazy engine designs and a lot of re-fueling pit stops...
This is not accurate, the first production direct injection gasoline automotive engine was in the 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL. It's true, you probably won't be running piezoelectric injectors without computer controls, but there's nothing preventing direct injection.
But that would make it interesting. How many of the advances we've made in the past 75yrs could be accomplished some other way if you take the computer away? You don't need a computer to accomplish nanosecond timing. Maybe there's a clever analog way to run piezoelectric injectors.
Maybe "no integrated circuits" might be a finer line.
To be clear, I don't think making elaborate analog ICs would be really "cheating" so long as they don't put a generic von Neumann machine on it.
EDIT: to be more clear, what I'd be trying to achieve with a rule change like this is making "computation" a somewhat larger investment in time and difficulty. By and large, at least in my opinion, profligate, non-essential computation has enabled many of the things that have made the sport less interesting. It's also made cars suck a lot. This would impose kind of a tax on those things.
I want to see F1 car design be about function/performance above all. I want to see awesome gadgets using insanely clever design. Then ideally that design should influence built items in the rest of the world.
F1 used to be influential in creating and developing high technology. Now it seems to be about gathering high technology from elsewhere so as to meet the insane regulations most efficiently.
How do you know this for a fact? Chinese press releases? You've driven one? Some auto blogger drove one?
After world war 2 Gorbachev or whoever visited the United States and during that trio visited a supermarket. He thought it was a facade, possibly, put on just for him, there's no way Americans are this prosperous (or whatever, this good at agriculture, farm equipment, etc)
Also do the race cars have 4 wheel drive, or all-wheel drive? I'm wagering all-wheel with "torque vectoring" and "Yaw control", like a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X.
Personally I feel that the rest of the world continues to dramatically under estimate China’s progress and technological advancement at our own peril. Is there fluff and are their lots of untrue claims, of course, but that is certainly not something they have a monopoly on.
China creates something of equal quality as a Western company? It must've been IP theft! China competes on price? It must be state subsidies! China creates something innovative? Don't use it - it'll send your data back to the CCP! Or just pretend it doesn't exist.
In reality Chinese people aren't idiots. We've spent a couple of decades giving away all of our manufacturing knowledge for a few cents of shareholder value, so it is not exactly surprising that they now possess that knowledge - and are able to build upon it. China is dealing with huge demographic changes, so obviously they've been pushing for automation, so it shouldn't be a surprise that those factories are now rapidly automating. Which we could've done in the West, but outsourcing it to cheap Chinese labor was cheaper in the short term.
For every genius in the West there are ten geniuses in China, and with their top-down economic policy they are able to apply it where it truly matters.
We created our own worst enemy, and are now crying foul. If we don't get rid of our outdated racist biases soon and start treating China like the successful superpower that it is, we're going to get completely steamrolled in the next few decades.
Chinese EVs are leading and that doesn’t necessarily mean being the best, most advanced vehicles. They are leading in value/pricing, and in many regions they are leading in sales.
BYD sells almost double the EV volume of Tesla globally as of December 2025. They are objectively leading in that respect.
I think the parent comment of yours made a good point (or at least adjacent to a good point) about China’s ability to enter the market: they can’t compete with 100 years of internal combustion engine development along with the vast parts supplier network of the West, but they can compete on battery chemistry, battery supply, motors, and the more vertically integrated EV space where automakers don’t need to depend on a huge network of parts suppliers like they did in the past.
I also think that a lot of pushback to the innovation that China is delivering is criticism that is stuck in the past. If you buy a Xiaomi car, it integrates perfectly with all your Xiaomi consumer devices. You can control your rice cooker or robot vacuum from your car’s integrated infotainment system. This type of approach was exactly what Apple was going to deliver before they abandoned their automotive project.
Or, you can buy a Mercedes and you’ll get a car with more precise handling and perfectly tuned driving characteristics. The infotainment system looks like Windows Vista.
Which side of the aisle do you think most consumers care about? I think most people buy into Xiaomi’s approach.
I've had MG suv rented recently with just gasoline engine and it was fine. This comes from long term bmw driver, they are not on the exactly same level, but light years ahead from similarly prices ie french vehicles. Handling was fine too, probably the biggest shock for me, this is where french, italian etc are losing me (bmw effect). And they cost 1/3 of bmw.
Heck, nobody seems to care that Toyota engines/transmissions sound like a vacuum cleaner and have pretty mediocre NVH on models like the Corolla, but they buy those products for reliability and efficiency.
Curse you, Apple and Jony Ive. You only needed to tone skeuomorphism down not kill it.
The hyperscreen from a physical hardware perspective looks strangely dated to me as well, depending on the specific car model.
It's not like the Dawn of the steam engine
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steam_engine
Secondarily power electronics; at that scale, you can't just pick a bigger transistor and call it a day.
By comparison the motors seem to be a mostly solved problem, although I'm sure there's still some scope for power-to-weight engineering there, it's not as critical as the battery pack.
Motors might be a 'solved problem' - there might not be much innovation, Maxwell's laws aren't changing any time soon, but there will surely be a lot of incremental improvement - an early 1900s ICE is considerably worse than a 2000s ICE.
But how much worse is a early 1900s electric motor from a modern one? I can't find data, but I suspect the first electric motor from the 1830s is more efficient than a modern ICE (even if we assume the ICE is built for efficiency, screw emissions). There is some room for improvement, but there isn't much difference between our best motors and perfection (a carnot cycle by contrast is as best much worse than perfection)
For example, DC motors used in some late-1900s trains still had a giant variable resistor in series with their motor, burning away a huge chunk of the power as heat to force the motor to run at a lower speed during acceleration. AC motors weren't much better.
Electric motors only became truly efficient when variable-frequency drive became viable, which was in the 1980s due to semiconductor innovation.
And only get cheap at scale.
This is the core point, but it applies for the whole of the industry. Motors just don't matter. An electric motor is an almost vanishing component of the weight and complexity of an electric vehicle. Cut the mass of the thing *in half* and you're looking at 100kg savings, tops. You could do that with a Model Y by just changing the roof material to something boring and not glass. You could almost do it by shrinking the oversized-as-is-the-fashion wheels.
So... it's great that Mercedez-Benz is producing these, I guess. But it won't make their cars anything more than incrementally better. Which is why we're seeing them crow about it in a press release and not a spec sheet.
We have a dual-motor EV and our lease is expiring this year. We have our eyes on the GLC EV, which will land in the U.S. with a tri-motor design at first. There’s no fun in a single-motor EV.
The talent had very little impact to be honest. The primary factor was a government looking 50 years down the road seeing that:
1. ICE engines have little to no long-term future in transportation.
2. global warming is a thing whether the right wing in the US likes it or not.
3. They were never going to overtake the West in ICE engines and had to attack from a different angle.
The US' lack of breakthroughs in EVs has little to do with technology or expertise and everything to do with an administration that is openly hostile towards EVs and renewable energy in general. For the rest of the planet, EVs becoming the primary form of transportation is just an obvious and logical conclusion, even if it takes us another 25-50 years to get there.
China saw it and decided to heavily incentivize and subsidize the rapid expansion of EVs both to fix the air quality issues in China and corner the market.
This is where Tesla made a huge difference with Supercharger stations. I am no fan of Elon, but that work was fundamental in making EVs viable in America.
I live in the US, but every summer I spend a month in Sweden, and the past two years I've rented EVs for the entire stay, and the buildout of chargers these past 4-5 years has been astonishing. It's gone from crap to fantastic in a very short time, and that's without massive government intervention or subsidies or screaming and cajoling.
Because in Sweden, the primary driver of charging stops along highways and in the cities are gas stations.
They already make all their profit from incidental purchases and not the gas itself, so them pivoting to EV charging stops makes perfect sense. They already have the infrastructure in place to sell you overpriced hotdogs and coffee and snacks for your road trip, they already have restrooms in place.
But they also do the same in the cities, it seems like every city gas station has also put up a couple of 350W charging stations. It's not half-assed, they mean business. They all see the writing on the wall, in neighbouring Norway EV's are 90+% of all new car sales, Sweden is at ~30% right now, and climbing, so gas stations will go out of business if they don't pivot to EV charging.
It's fundamental market economy forces at work, the kind of stuff that the US normally prides itself of.
So why is that not happening in the US?
The other part is that a lot of money is made in the production and sale of fuel and those players have significant influence in how things work -- this is evident in the Trump admin's demonization of renewables and going all in on fossil fuels.
Watching all this craziness from the sidelines is crazymaking and heartbreaking. We can only keep China at bay for so long, and then when the dam breaks the domestic auto makers are going to go down, along with the whole economic ecosystem that supports them. It doesn't have to be this way...
In Europe, Tesla generally has a single-digit EV marketshare, so over 90% of consumers don't care about or use the Supercharger network, and are obviously demanding charging locations.
Two years ago in Sweden I rented a random Chinese EV , a NIO ET7, and its onboard navigation system was fully connected to all the major charging networks, so I could see charging stations, their speeds, and open stalls directly in the car navigation, no external apps needed. So there's a whole perfectly functioning non-Tesla ecosystem, and pretty much everything is tap-to-pay, so no apps, no registrations, no memberships, no nothing. And no lock-in.
Kinda ironic that Teslas big start and Supercharger buildout is now holding the US back compared to the rest of the world.
Sounds feasible to me.
It has nothing to do with the current administration either. For one thing, China's dominance predates it. For another, the EU and Japan have failed equally hard at capturing any meaningful EV marketshare.
All the industrial processes and machine tool development that happened in the ICE car industry over the last century (and the electronic hardware manufacturing, more recently) was available day one.
China has industrial policy. The country and companies are able to invest in BEV technology knowing that everyone agrees on the direction.
So it looks like axial flux, the OG was introduced in 1820 something and it wasn't easy to manufacture. So radio flux came after that and has been around ever since. So axial flux is making its come back this year!
The video is very interesting too about decompounding returns when the motor is less with the other things need to weigh less too.
Especially the bit about potentially not needing brakes in the near future because the regen is so capable. Which would lead to less weight and less parts even again!
My understanding is that after 80% the rate of charge a lithium ion battery can accept diminishes.
Could the 80% Li-on battery accept the charge from the brake regen fast enough? Or would it still have to be drained somewhere else if the battery could not accept it?
Edit.... Video doesn't seem to explain very well either