The dream of putting electric motors inside wheel hubs is not new. Ferdinand Porsche developed one way back in 1900, and the US sent them to the moon in our Lunar Roving Vehicles in the early '70s. Yet more than a century later, in-wheel motors remain a marginal technology, confined to prototypes and abandoned startup ventures. That may be about to change.
Slovenian company Elaphe Propulsion Technologies has spent the past two decades engineering in-wheel motors that work reliably in harsh conditions. The company's motors are capable of blipping torque delivery almost instantaneously, and with a motor at each corner coordinated by a central computer, it's like having "just one brake in the middle…you feel very safe when you get on ice," according to company leadership, with the motors achieving a 10-kHz modulation cycle and a reaction time of just 4 milliseconds for full torque delivery. That precision matters more than raw power on slippery surfaces.
Winter testing by Hyundai on frozen roads shows the practical payoff of this engineering. By distributing torque individually to each wheel rather than relying on a central motor and traditional traction control, the vehicle gains superior grip and stability in conditions where conventional layouts struggle. Elaphe's latest system claims up to 10 percent faster vehicle acceleration and up to 15 percent higher lateral acceleration with torque vectoring for sharper handling and greater corner control.
This is precisely where in-wheel motors hold genuine technical promise. Engineers could directly control the torque or resistance at each wheel, simplifying traction and stability control systems by controlling power and braking directly rather than applying the brake at one wheel to get the car moving in snow. Yet despite decades of evidence that the technology works, it has struggled to achieve mainstream adoption.
The reasons are less about engineering than about economics and risk. Lordstown Motors would have provided real-world durability evidence for Elaphe in its Ohio-built Endurance electric pickup using motors from the Slovenian company, if it weren't for Lordstown's demise in June 2023. That failure was symptomatic of a deeper problem: automakers hesitate to commit resources to a technology that requires redesigning entire vehicle platforms.
Elaphe believes it can lower overall vehicle cost by 20 percent and boost range and efficiency by 20 percent, but only if automakers make a substantial investment including an electrical architecture intended to accommodate it, with one company executive noting that at the component level the efficiency improvement is insufficient for a US$5 billion investment. No major automaker has signed up to test that commitment yet.
The practical barriers remain real. In-wheel motor technology adds unsprung weight to a vehicle, which can compromise ride quality, and the increased unsprung weight can limit the use of in-wheel motor technology. One of Ford's top EV executives cited durability concerns when the company nixed in-wheel motors as a possibility in the F-150 Lightning electric truck, and Aptera dropped in-wheel motors for its production-bound three-wheeler in what appeared to be an issue with cost.
Yet signs of momentum are emerging. Hyundai and Toyota have continued to develop their own in-wheel motors, or at least remain involved in their development. Protean Electric has become the first company to develop and supply in-wheel motors for a mainstream OEM passenger car programme, with a landmark project for the Renault 5 Turbo 3E. In 2024, Hyundai filed a patent for in-wheel electric motor technology, aiming to enhance packaging efficiency and vehicle dynamics.
The technology's future likely lies not with universal adoption but with strategic niches. High-performance vehicles, where torque vectoring delivers tangible handling advantages, remain the logical entry point. Autonomous vehicles, where independent wheel control enables novel safety features, represent another avenue. Elaphe has pushed its full validation cycle for the vehicle lifetime of its motors out to 300,000 miles, from the previous 150,000 miles, addressing the durability scepticism that has haunted the technology for decades.
Elaphe's ice-traction demonstrations offer evidence that the engineering challenges are solvable. Whether automakers view solving them as worth the cost and complexity remains the open question.