Operation characteristics of ferrite permanent magnet in-wheel axial-gap motor with coreless rotor structure for electric city commuters

Small electric vehicles called city commuters are used for commuting and traveling short distances within cities. These vehicles have been extensively researched and developed because of their high environmental performance and small battery size. The in-wheel permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) for electric city commuters generally utilizes powerful rare earth permanent magnets (PMs). However, the employment of rare earth PMs should be reduced, owing to increasing prices and export restrictions on rare earth materials, making it necessary to develop an in-wheel PMSM that does not use rare earth PMs. We propose a ferrite PM-type axial gap motor that generates high torque density and has features such as a coreless rotor structure and a reduction gearbox on the inner side of the stator. Detailed operational characteristics of the proposed motor remain unverified by experiment, so this paper presents such operational characteristics as obtained from experimentation on a prototype.