Electric vehicles, whether or not they’re automobiles on the street or electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) plane, are constructed round comparable electric motors. However there are important variations together with element prices, mass, and redundancy.
Jon Wagner spent 5 years because the senior director of battery engineering for Tesla earlier than becoming a member of California-based eVTOL developer Joby Aviation in 2017. He spoke with IEEE Spectrum about how engineering differs between automobiles and plane.
How do eVTOL motors differ from automotive motors?
Jon Wagner: Normally, floor transportation has a distinct concentrate on price versus mass. You recognize, would you be prepared to spend extra on the elements to be able to save a specific amount of mass? The trade-offs finish on the bottom automobile and at a sure level the price is dominant, whereas with aviation, the trade-offs between price and mass go so much deeper. And so for sure options eVTOL makers are prepared to spend more cash to be able to allow both lighter weight or higher effectivity.
The opposite key distinction is expounded to security. In essence, we’re coping with the identical motor applied sciences for floor transportation and aviation proper now, so the failure modes are comparable. However in fact, with aviation we’ve got the need for continued secure flight and touchdown, and that drives what you do within the design to mitigate these failures in the event that they had been to happen. In lots of instances in floor transportation, the mitigation for a failure is to drag over safely to the aspect of the street. In aviation, the mitigation is redundancy, as a result of there’s not an possibility to drag over.
Is redundancy designed into EV motors?
Wagner: Sometimes, redundancy will not be designed into electric vehicle drive systems solely for the aim of redundancy. There are some automobiles now which have all-wheel drive—so there’s a motor on the entrance, a motor on the again—in order a secondary characteristic you get the redundancy. Nevertheless it wasn’t achieved with the first intent of getting redundancy.
How does Joby’s eVTOL manufacturing evaluate to EV manufacturing?
Wagner: Probably the most environment friendly method to run a large-scale engineering effort in a mature trade, reminiscent of automotive, is to interrupt your system up into items that may be outsourced to suppliers who’re going to do a extremely good job on each bit. The draw back is that if you break an issue up into three items, you now have interface boundaries between every of those items, and people at all times create inefficiencies. We had been in a position to design extremely built-in options with out taking that manufacturing penalty.
Are there any supplies you’re actually enthusiastic about?
Wagner: Permendur [a cobalt-iron alloy] usually prices within the neighborhood of 10 occasions as a lot as conventional motor metal. That’s important, and it’s typically not utilized in floor transportation due to that price. It comes with small enhancements in efficiency, however sufficient that for aviation it’s fairly attention-grabbing.
Will electric aircraft catch on like floor EVs?
Wagner: I’ve at all times wished to be a really ahead thinker with respect to power-train. Nonetheless, one of many issues I’ve realized over time is that power-train growth has to come back with a really wholesome dose of endurance. Creating an entire new sort of power-train is an enormous endeavor, however it’s one which I’m very assured the aviation trade will undertake. We’re definitely enterprise it right here at Joby, and we’ll see that broaden, I’m certain, with time.
This text seems within the Might 2026 print problem as “Jon Wagner.”
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