In a passenger car, at highway speeds, hub motors are a very bad idea.
(Slow moving hub motor vehicles, like scissor-lifts and floor scrubbers,
are a marvelous idea, BTW.)
Pretty much every major automotive manufacturer has prototyped a car
with hub motors at one time or another through the years. Management
comes up with the hub motor idea, and funds the building of a prototype.
The one first was Porsche back in the late 1800's. Without exception,
once they built a prototype car, capable of highways speeds, that had
hub motors, they realized this "brilliant" idea had very serious
shortcomings, and quietly abandoned the idea altogether.
The advantages are alluring and obvious, but the drawbacks are subtle
and numerous. Every hub motor vehicle project dies the death of a
thousand cuts.
The i-MiEV prototype started out as the MIEV (Mitsubishi In-wheel motor
Electric Vehicle) prototype which had four hub motors. Then they changed
the prototype to have only two hub motors. Then they changed it to a
inboard single electric motor running a differential powering two
wheels, just like everyone else does. Then they altered the acronym to
i-MiEV (Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle) to quietly bury the
original hub motor concept entirely.
Bill D.
I won't much get into the practicality of wheel motors. They work well on
bikes so some engineers think they sound great on cars, until they actually
try them out. The Mitsubishi Imiev was supposed to have them, too.
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