In the new IDTechEx report Electric Motors for Hybrid and Pure Electric Vehicles 2015-2025: Land, Water, Air it is estimated that the number of traction motor manufacturers is now 200. IDTechEx should know; it has profiled 157 of them in this new report and highlighted 27 manufacturers well-positioned to address the largest and the potentially most profitable sectors, which are usually not the same thing. It also identifies 20 OEM vehicle manufacturers making their own. Matching that to the $144 billion market need in 2025, IDTechEx finds that it is not optimally addressed. There is an oversupply of companies making synchronous or largely synchronous motors but, even here, there is a shortage of companies making what is wanted in future.
For example, the newly-popular pure-electric quadcopters employ very lightweight outrunner motors, a variant of permanent-magnet synchronous motor. Another newly-important sector dealt with at length in the report is outboard motors for boats. These must be marinised and geared to very low speeds whereas electric aircraft, another emerging market, need very high power to weight ratio and greatest reliability and safety (some motors accelerate to explosion when certain modes of controller failure kick in whereas others are inherently safe in this respect).
Siemens is well-positioned serving Ford and pioneering new land, water and airborne uses and newly allied with leading Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BAIC in a joint venture. ABN Greiffenberger also in Germany serves forklift, car, golf car applications and others – a good breadth. Aisin AW of Japan, putting electric motors into their transmission for Toyota and other leaders, is in a good market position. Golden Motor Technology in China has appropriate motors for cars, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and e-bikes etc. Guangdong M&C Electric Power in China is even more widely positioned with both asynchronous and synchronous traction motors for buses down to e-bikes, attributes shared by Higen Motors in South Korea for instance. Many of the chosen leaders also offer inverters/ controllers for their motors, important both for optimal performance and to reflect the fact that increasingly they sell for more than the motors – use in quadcopters being a recent example.
A free webinar highlighting key research from the report will be held twice on Wednesday July 23, 2014 at 9:30am BST and 5:00pm BST.
For more information on electric motors see the report: www.IDTechEx.com/emotors
