In-wheel motors grew to become a actuality in a manufacturing electrical pickup for the blink of a watch—within the Lordstown Endurance. However the know-how, also referred to as wheel-hub motors, hasn’t but been confirmed as production-bound for every other U.S. passenger car or personal-use truck.
That would change sooner or later. Based mostly on some footage lately printed, Ford seems to be testing a pickup truck with in-wheel electrical motors, presumably for an electrical model of its Tremendous Obligation heavy-duty pickups.
Spy photographs printed Thursday by Autoblog present a camouflaged truck that seems to be a modified Ford F-150 Lightning. It is laborious to say for positive, however the round form behind the wheel seen in a single picture seems like a hub motor. It is definitely suspicious that the car lacks seen brake calipers, as Ford not affords drum brakes on its huge pickups, Autoblog notes.
The truck additionally has eight-lug wheels, that are used on Ford Tremendous Obligation pickups however not on the manufacturing Lightning or gasoline F-150. An electrical Tremendous Obligation would additionally make extra sense as an utility for in-wheel motors as Ford already nixed them for the Lightning.
2024 Ford Tremendous Obligation F-250
Ford’s world EV product improvement director, Darren Palmer, informed Inexperienced Automotive Stories in 2021 that Ford thought-about in-wheel motors for the F-150 Lighting and confirmed that Ford continued to check them, however he emphasised that it determined they did not make the lower then for a lot of causes. The unspring mass, making the trip and dealing with tough to tune and tame, was a part of it. However the dealbreaker sounded to be hub motors’ seals, probably letting contaminants in from off-roading.
Lordstown Motors opted for hub motors licensed from Slovenian agency Elaphe for the ill-fated Endurance. Versus tens of millions of Lightning improvement miles, Lordstown mentioned in 2021 that it had put about 20,000 improvement miles on its electrical pickup earlier than its launch and about 200,000 improvement miles on the motors. Solely a handful of Endurance vehicles had been accomplished earlier than the corporate declared chapter.
2024 Ford Tremendous Obligation F-250
That mentioned, in 2023, Ford filed a patent for a system that makes use of a mix of in-wheel motors and strong axles. Maybe that system is now being put to the check.
In the meantime, Ferrari, McLaren, and others are reportedly contemplating in-wheel motors for future efficiency EVs. A number of aftermarket conversions have proven off the packaging strengths that they permit as effectively. But it surely’s but to be revealed whether or not the know-how has developed sufficient for Ford (and maybe others) to see them as a viable answer—or whether or not they’ll stay on the testing stage for a few years to come back.