Develop an ultra-compact motor for electric vehicles, combined with an inverter on silicon carbide. Electric cars and hybrids are progressing very quickly, which brings to life more and more large batteries that store energy for electric motors. It came to the fact that in the Chevrolet Volt batteries partially occupied the salon, sitting between the passengers not only the first but also the second row of seats; for this they even had to sacrifice one footprint. By the way, isn’t the low popularity of the model connected with this, which led to its recent withdrawal from production? To avoid such restrictions in the future, manufacturers of hybrid cars and electric vehicles are struggling to reduce the size of the electric motor and auxiliary systems. Here is the option for the Application of silicon carbide in the field of electric vehicles .
In the new development of Mitsubishi, instead of a separately made electric motor and an inverter, the placement of both units in one cylindrical housing was used. The use of SiC-based chips in the element base of the inverter has become a key solution that has drastically reduced the size and weight of the new integrated system.
The fact is that in existing inverters on silicon, overheating of the element base leads to failure of the device itself. When using a much more heat-resistant silicon carbide, its normal functioning is possible at temperatures up to 600? C, which significantly exceeds the performance of analogs. Such a high-temperature inverter requires less intensive cooling, which means that due to the less cumbersome cooling system, the size of its unit can be reduced by half from the standard. In addition, it can be combined in the same housing with an electric motor, during operation of which a significant amount of heat is also emitted.
Generally speaking, silicon carbide has long been considered a promising player in the semiconductor market: due to “many times” the greater (compared to silicon) width of the forbidden zone, the chips on it can be radically thinner than the usual silicon ones. A thinner chip, of course, means a decrease in resistance and energy loss in the inverter. According to Mitsubishi Electric, the loss when inverting current when using carborundum electronics fell by 50%. If so, this is undoubtedly a serious breakthrough.
Interesting and new DC electric motor on neodymium magnets
Developed by a Japanese company, its own method of especially dense winding of coils made it possible to put into practice a technology that developers call poki-poki: the super-dense layout allows reducing the size of an electric motor by 40–50%. Finally, the designers revised the size and layout of the stator and rotor, which increased the efficiency of the motor: with the same voltage and amperage at the input, it shows a 5% increase in power.
The corporation expects to enter the market with a new system in 2017. In the near future, it is planned to continue fine-tuning of the motor, as well as to consider options for further reducing its mass while maintaining the same power.