Elaphe Readies In-Wheel Motors for OEM EVs After 2030

IWMs are a powertrain architecture that enhances traction, regenerative braking, and cornering stability alongside improved performance and safety, the company believes.

February 28, 2025

Sebastian Blanco

Elaphe is testing its IWM AWD in an otherwise stock Hyundai Ioniq 5 AWD in Sweden this winter. (Elaphe)

Elaphe unveiled what it claims is the first and only in-wheel electric motor (IWM) designed to fit existing EVs at CES in January. Elaphe Propulsion Technologies, a pioneer of in-wheel electric motor (IWM) technology, said its new IWM product line, branded Sonic, will start with the Sonic.1 a high-performance IWM designed to have high power density and fit into a 21-inch wheel alongside a conventional brake disc.

Elaphe shared its CES 2025 booth with Italdesign and its Quintessenza EV concept. (Sebastian Blanco)

Elaphe is testing and demonstrating its IWM AWD and advanced controls in Sweden this winter. The direct-drive IWMs were added to an otherwise stock Hyundai Ioniq 5 AWD with the 77-kWh battery pack. The EV has a limited power output of 230 kW, with front-rear split of 30%-70% available power. Elaphe’s base IWM technology is scalable, in radius and in axle, and has been previously tested by vehicle start-ups like Lordstown Motors and Aptera. At CES, the 23-inch wheel scalability study produced 300 kW (402 hp) peak power.

The Scout 1 in-wheel motor from Elaphe on display at CES 2025. (Sebastian Blanco)

Luka Ambrozic, Elaphe’s chief commercial officer, told SAE Media that the Sonic.1 could be used as a bolt-on solution to electrify the front wheels of an ICE application that doesn’t have space or just to add more performance to an existingelectric vehicle. The low-volume Sonic.1 is meant for higher-end street legal that are also taken to the track. “We're thinking Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bugattis,” he said. “Anything above $100,000 can actually benefit from this.” Elaphe’s IWM’s can deliver their full torque in 4 ms.

Elaphe is developing other IWMs for mass-market vehicles but is doing that with OEM partners working on a new platform. Ambrozic said these vehicles will not arrive in the marketplace until the 2030s. While performance is the goal for the Sonic.1, Elaphe is tuning its mass-market IWMs for efficiency, cost and safety. Elape said its IWMs have wheel control that’s 20 times faster than competitors, up to 10 kilohertz, or 10,000 times per second. Because this precision can be controlled in both directions independently, the system can provide a 10% increase in acceleration, along with improved slip and traction control, increased lateral performance and reduced braking distance (by 10 to 15%).

Ambrozic said the cost for using Elape’s IWMs result in a vehicle that’s in “the same range as any other powertrain in this segment” and that the higher costs for the IWM themselves are balanced out by cost reductions at the vehicle level. The IWMs also provide packaging benefits but the downside is, of course, added unsprung mass to the wheels. “Since we are working with

the OEMs, we know that it's manageable and that the benefits for those OEMs are higher than the unsprung mass that's added,” Ambrozic said. Actuators, ABS systems and active suspension components could all be removed or reduced since the IWMs can perform these tasks. Overall, Ambrozic said Elaphe sees total reduced platform costs of up to 30%.

The Italdesign Quintessenza EV concept, with Elaphe in-wheel motors at each corner. (Elaphe)

“Those benefits are our long-term plan,” he said. “This is why we're in the game. We want to make cars better and cheaper and more flexible. Consider in-wheel motors not as a powertrain, [but] really an enabling technology for you to do software-defined dynamics and chassis control.”

Elaphe shared its CES booth with Italdesign at CES, a booth dominated by a large (and technically drivable) concept EV called the Quintessenza. With four IWMs, the Quintessenza produces 500 kW (671 hp) at each of the rear wheels and 300 kW at the front wheelsAmbrozic said from an engineering perspective what’s been most exciting working on IWMs is that they’ve been discovering things with near-weekly regularity for the last five years now.

“When you don't have this kind of control frequency, you really can't explore anything,” he said. “But now, when we started to explore, we're continuously finding new functions, like how to artificially decrease or increase grip, that we can vibrate everything to create sound and vibrations on the chassis, some haptic feedback, just by vibrating parts in the tire. Ambrozic said the kind of specific, targeted haptics that Elaphe’s IWMs can give vehicle occupants could play an important role in keeping OEM brands distinct.

“You feel it in your butt, you feel it in the pedals, you feel it in the steering wheel, and we can do that directionally,” he said. “The brands, when they go electric, they want to keep some of that character, or they want to develop a new kind of character for a particular product line that's unique to them. It’s like a gimmick, five minutes of an engineer who had this idea, but it turned out to be one of the key characteristics.”