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An Innovative EV Motor Used by Lamborghini, McLaren, and Ferrari Is Being Mass-Produced by Mercedes

Compared to the usual EV power plants, axial-flux motors are smaller and lighter, and have more torque. But they're hard to make at scale. Now Mercedes is bringing them to the masses.

By sending mass into a virtuous downward spiral, carmakers could increase range, decrease cost, and perhaps even preserve the agile handling of lightweight cars, which enthusiasts also worry might disappear with the advent of the EV. It's a neat, resolved piece of engineering, and it makes the Tesla motor look like a science fair project with its messy, wasteful copper end-windings, hand-tied with Kevlar string bulging out of the stator. The copper field coils are shaped from a single stretch of wire and pressed into the stator eight-deep in processes unique to Lucid, eschewing the hundreds of resistance-inducing welds of a Porsche motor and Tesla's messy end-windings.

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