WattStep receives funding from the Swedish Energy Agency to develop new electric motor technology

WattStep Group AB, together with Chalmers University of Technology, has been awarded funding from the Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten) through the FFI programme (Strategic Vehicle Research and Innovation) to develop a new generation of electric motors free from rare earth metals.

The project, "An electrically excited axial flux motor for electric vehicles with a focus on efficiency and sustainability," is being carried out jointly by the two partners.

About the project

Today's electric motors are often built around permanent magnets made from neodymium, a rare earth metal largely mined and refined in a small number of countries outside Europe. This makes the supply chain vulnerable and costly.

In the project, WattStep and Chalmers are developing and testing a prototype of an electrically excited axial flux motor with two rotors and a central stator, entirely free from rare earth metals. The goal is to increase efficiency by at least 2 percentage points and reduce manufacturing emissions by at least 20 percent, compared with today's permanent magnet motors.