Electric axle drive for high performance tricycle

For the first time, Vitesco Tech­nolo­gies is using its EMR3 elec­tric axle dri­ve out­side the pas­sen­ger car sec­tor: The high­ly inte­grat­ed sys­tem, which has been in series pro­duc­tion since 2019 and has already been select­ed for more than 20 vehi­cle mod­els from Euro­pean and Asian man­u­fac­tur­ers, will pow­er the Twike 5. The three-wheeled high-per­for­mance vehi­cle is a com­bi­na­tion of elec­tric car, trike and recum­bent and is sched­uled for small-scale pro­duc­tion from mid-2022. Accord­ing to the cur­rent state of devel­op­ment, the two-seater will accel­er­ate to 100 km/h in 3.8 sec­onds and reach a top speed of 190 kilo­me­ters per hour. In addi­tion to this impres­sive dri­ving per­for­mance, the Twike 5 is char­ac­ter­ized by very high effi­cien­cy. For exam­ple, the com­bined pow­er con­sump­tion accord­ing to WLTP will be just 6.9 kWh per 100 kilo­me­ters and the com­bined range will be more than 400 kilo­me­ters (fig­ures based on cur­rent sim­u­la­tions, depend­ing on the bat­tery vari­ant selected).

The third-gen­er­a­tion EMR (Elec­tron­ics Motor Reduc­er) is a com­pact, light­weight unit con­sist­ing of a per­ma­nent mag­net syn­chro­nous motor, the pow­er elec­tron­ics (invert­er) and a reduc­tion gear­box (reduc­er). This scal­able elec­tric dri­ve mobi­lizes up to 150 kW of pow­er as well as up to 2,900 Nm of torque, weighs only 76 kilo­grams, and its dimen­sions (40x35x55 cm) are bare­ly larg­er than an on-board case. The high­ly inte­grat­ed sys­tem gets by with­out any plugs or cables at all when con­nect­ing the motor and invert­er, which also con­tributes to its robustness.

“The inte­grat­ed elec­tric axle dri­ve is an inno­v­a­tive and at the same time ful­ly mature tech­nol­o­gy, as the many pro­duc­tion vehi­cles equipped with it prove day after day. Its use in the tri­cy­cle shows just how diverse the EMR3’s poten­tial appli­ca­tions are. With its min­i­mal instal­la­tion space require­ments, low weight and the dri­ving fun it enables, it is tai­lor-made for this small, light­weight high-per­for­mance vehicle.”

- Hilko Hakvoort, head of the High Volt­age Dri­ves prod­uct line

This is also empha­sized by Mar­tin Moescheid, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and share­hold­er. “In addi­tion to per­for­mance, effi­cien­cy was of key impor­tance to us. The EMR3 has high effi­cien­cy in all load ranges, so we can achieve very low con­sump­tion val­ues. In addi­tion, this dri­ve unit is par­tic­u­lar­ly light­weight, extreme­ly robust as well as easy to adapt. The back­ground of an already ongo­ing, high-qual­i­ty series pro­duc­tion also con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to our decision.”

The Twike — a port­man­teau of twin and bike — goes back to stu­dents at ETH Zurich, who devel­oped the orig­i­nal type of this two-seater, closed recum­bent in 1986. To this day, the ped­als have remained a fea­ture of this type of vehi­cle. While the cur­rent Twike 3 series mod­el uses them to mechan­i­cal­ly sup­port the dri­ve shaft, the ped­al force in the Twike 5 is used to gen­er­ate elec­tri­cal ener­gy. In both cas­es, this relieves the bat­tery and increas­es the range. Above all, how­ev­er, the ped­als are intend­ed to enable sporty activ­i­ty while rid­ing. With 70 kW of pow­er and 1,800 Nm of torque at the dri­ve axle, the Twike 5 will be by far the most pow­er­ful mod­el in the brand’s history.