Tiny electric motor is as powerful as four Tesla motors put together and outperforms record holder by 40%
UK-based YASA has just built a tiny electric motor that makes Tesla motors look like slackers, and this invention could potentially reshape the future of EVs. The company has unveiled a new prototype that's breaking records for power and performance density. It's smaller and lighter than traditional motors, yet it's somehow more powerful. Perhaps the best part is that it's a fully functional motor, rather than some lab-only concept.
This tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower. The new YASA axial flux motor weighs just 28 pounds, or about the same as a small dog. However, it delivers a jaw-dropping 750 kilowatts of power, which is the equivalent of 1,005 horsepower. That's about the same as two Tesla Model 3 Performance cars combined, or four individual Tesla motors. In comparison, the previous record holder, which was also produced by the same company, weighed 28.8 pounds, and achieved a peak power of 550 kilowatts (737 horsepower). This makes the current electric motor 40 percent better than the previous edition. It can also sustain between 350 and 400 kilowatts (469–536 horsepower) continuously, meaning it's not just built for short bursts, as it can deliver massive power all day long.
[...] A lighter motor means a lighter car, which means better efficiency, faster acceleration, and longer range from the same battery.
For EVs, every pound matters, so saving weight without compromising performance could be a gamechanger.
YASA, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz, already produces motors that power some of the world's fastest and most expensive cars.
Like the year of Linux, will this be the year of Electric Vehicles ??
(Score: 5, Interesting) by corey on Thursday November 06 2025, @07:45PM (2 children)
I’ll read the article soon as I’m interested in the electrical/electromagnetic design. Also interested in the efficiency.
But generally in terms of the use of the new motor in cars, assuming all the claims are true, I wonder if this will result in a true electric supercar, whose main issue is getting the power to the ground. I bet this’ll be like the Tesla model S ludicrous mode, which gives supercars a run for their money but cashed up “motorheads” will still go for Ferraris etc because the noise they make, to placate our/their prehistoric human brain desire for roaring noise.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2025, @06:44AM
What do you mean? Are these not electric supercars?
World’s Fastest Car - 496 kmh / 308mph - BYD Yangwang U9 Xtreme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9v1WyAgLA [youtube.com]
Horsepower vs Lightness: BYD Yangwang U9 Xtreme vs Porsche 911 GT3 at the Nürburgring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LShRb8OUxYI [youtube.com]
Xiaomi SU7 Ultra Prototype | 06:46:874 official laptime | Nordschleife
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I7M-ZrvawY [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Friday November 07 2025, @10:09AM
These things get covered in IEEE Spectrum every couple of years, e.g. most recently this one [ieee.org]. It was the axial flux motor's turn six years ago [ieee.org]. Somehow none of them ever turn up as real products.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday November 06 2025, @07:56PM (3 children)
Racing and high performance automotive technology actually *does* trickle down. Mirrors, seat belts, and a lot of other things came out of that so I'm down with this but I also want to know how it could help regular people. We don't need a 1000hp Prius. Does it scale *down* and is it affordable to the point where we can use several smaller versions to get redundancy and/or 4WD drive? A vehicle with 4 60hp versions that cost less than $500 each? That'd be sweet. No hassle with mechanics. Un-bolt, drive to parts store on your remaining good motors, do a core exchange. That'd be nice.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Thursday November 06 2025, @09:05PM (1 child)
It scales down by putting less electricity through it.
(Score: 4, Touché) by istartedi on Thursday November 06 2025, @09:41PM
That's like saying a Veyron scales down by driving the speed limit, or a gaming PC with the latest GPU scales down by just using it for light web browsing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2025, @06:58AM
Maybe it means you need smaller amounts of rare earth, copper, etc for the same power motor?
(Score: 4, Informative) by epitaxial on Thursday November 06 2025, @08:24PM (1 child)
As the Dark Matter from Koenigsegg https://www.koenigsegg.com/dark-matter [koenigsegg.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2025, @07:05AM
That's 39kg for 800HP
This is 28 pounds (12.7kg) for 1000HP.
https://www.stanfordmagnets.com/radial-vs-axial-flux-motor-which-is-suitable-for-the-future-of-electric-machines.html [stanfordmagnets.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday November 06 2025, @08:25PM (1 child)
I hope to see new retrofits of power tools if this technology is more than just investment brouhaha ( the business equivalent of click-bait ).
E-bikes, scooters, personal mobility devices.
Compressors ( HVAC - Heat Pumps ).
Wonder if they will make a better generator?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2025, @12:47AM
For sure many things would benefit. If I'm not mistaken the motor requires a fairly complex phase generator / controller, but nowadays electronics have become so inexpensive it might work for even small things.
My washing machine ("Maytag" (and many others owned by Electrolux)) uses a direct-drive 3-phase motor with many electromagnets and a permanent magnet rotor. But it's radial flux, not an axial flux motor.
The elsewhere mentioned Koenigsegg "Dark Matter" motor runs on 6 phases. (That guy is genius).
When flat motors came out we called them "pancake motors" and were originally simple DC motors. Most ICE cars use a "pancake" (fairly flat) motor for the cooling fan(s).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DadaDoofy on Thursday November 06 2025, @08:34PM (5 children)
So typical of clickbait articles like this one are the parts that have been left out, like how much it costs or how long it lasts. As usual, with the inconvenient truths left out, they can simply be replaced with claims that are misleading or outright useless. Yes, all motors run "continuously", until they don't. Yes, "saving weight without compromising performance could be a gamechanger", if it wasn't cost prohibitive. Again, with that part left out, let me guess...
"Like the year of Linux, will this be the year of Electric Vehicles ??"
Have you had your head buried in the sand? No, 2025 marks the death spiral of the electric vehicle.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=25/10/30/0024205&from=rss [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2025, @09:08PM
You should amend you last sentence to read:
No, 2025 marks the death spiral of the electric vehicle in the USA.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 07 2025, @01:41AM (1 child)
HEY! That's my copyrighted, patented, and trademarked line! Shift supervisor would call me to a broken machine. I would spend 10 minutes to 10 hours getting it to run. I'd tell the supervisor that "It should run until it doesn't!"
Small correction, though. A lot of motors run intermittently, and they are engineered differently than their (usually) heavier duty continuous run cousins.
Alternative für Deutschland
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Friday November 07 2025, @10:13AM
Kinda like the starter motor on my diesel van.
It's well known among the Diesel crowd that one can and will destroy starter motors if the glow plug circuit is malfunctioning, causing the fuel to never reach autoignition temperature by compression alone.
Diesels are worse than gassers at this as we typically run two large lead-acid batteries in parallel to get enough electrical energy into the starter to rapidly compress the cylinder air charge so the fuel will self-ignite upon fuel injection. My diesel is 100% old-school mechanical - it's all gears, cams, shafts, and valves, and likes 1200 to 1800 rpm. Even it's oil pump is just another gear meshing in the sump.
My starter is rated 3.5 KW. Doesn't take long for it to heat up. Glow plugs are manually controlled, as I am a helluva lot better at judging what it takes to start the engine than the original controller was. Lots of training. Cerebral Newton-Raphson algorithm with compensation for intake air temp, engine block temp, and altitude. Analog. Meaning I don't do digital. Just have a "feel" for it. Most of the time, I catch on the first compression. No latency in a diesel. Everything except temperature and pressure is ready to go. I nail the temperature while the fuel pressure is ramping up, and the starter motor provides the cylinder pressure. If the engine is still intact, a start is inevitable. That's what I like so much about these old dinosaurs.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by higuita on Friday November 07 2025, @10:51AM
EV aren't just sold in the USA, just saying...
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Sunday November 09 2025, @05:28AM
If an electric motor doesn't have mechanical commutation or slip rings, the only wear part is bearings. If the design is adequate (including lubrication) it should last "forever."
(Score: 4, Touché) by AlwaysNever on Thursday November 06 2025, @08:38PM (1 child)
...when I see it on the public roads. Meanwhile, this looks like smoke and mirrors to me.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2025, @08:03AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday November 06 2025, @09:48PM (3 children)
"Tesla" as reference unit of car brand popularity is a bit problematic, imo, because, well, the author might be one of those "something with media" types without solid education, and might never have heard about magnetic flux and stuff...
But "small dog" for weight is up there with "football fields" and "olympic swimming pools". :)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 07 2025, @12:31AM (1 child)
Would you prefer less that a Fat Mac? (I.e. the original Apple Macintosh with a memory expansion...21 lbs. if I recall correctly.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Friday November 07 2025, @03:24AM
A Fat Mac weighs in, like the original Mac and the Mac Plus, at 7.5 kg (16 lbs). A HD20 would weigh another 3.5 kg (7 lbs), but the resulting 23 lbs are still less then the 28 lbs of the "small dog". We'd have to throw in a StyleWriter as well.
Also, the "small dog" standard given is rather questionable, because a Yorkshire Terrier comes at around a mere 3.5kg. The motor is more in the Dachshund spectrum of 16 to 32 lbs, which I'd already consider to be a medium sized dog.
(Score: 2, Touché) by pTamok on Friday November 07 2025, @08:27AM
Olympic swimming pools [wikipedia.org] and football fields [wikipedia.org] are reasonably well defined in volume and area, but, as far as I know, there is no standard-setting organization like, for example, ISO or the Kennel Club, that sets a formal definition of a 'small dog' [wikipedia.org]. In my search I found this: https://dogchart.com/dog-size-chart.html [dogchart.com] , but without a reference, it could be something generated by an AI with no basis in fact, so I won't quote it, as saying "I found something on the Internet that might have been generated by an LLM" is not exactly reliable.
It's possible my 'search-engine-fu' was inadequate: but the conclusion is that while swimming pools and football fields have formal definitions, small dogs don't, so it is a poor thing to use as a comparator.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Sunday November 09 2025, @06:32PM
At least in Spain it's getting momentum.
Not for long distance, but many delivery companies use EV and recharge them in the night. Also many taxis are EV.
For long distance, I don't see It in the near future. Filling the a tank of gas takes minutes, recharging a battery takes hours.