Inboard engines make the humble Hyundai a beast on ice

In-wheel motors have been around since the beginning of electric motors. Ferdinand Porsche somehow developed them in 1900, and the United States sent them to the moon in our lunar rovers in the early 1970s. But, with the exception of e-bikes, these bikes have never become mainstream. It seemed so Lordstown Motors This would be their time to shine, but that never happened.

Lordstown Endurance truck is Dead nowis doomed to haunt the growing graveyard of failed electric vehicle startups. But the source of its engines, a Slovenian company called Elaphe, is still very much alive, improving its technology and installing it in all sorts of interesting projects.

Elaphe promises electric vehicles with better performance, greater handling, greater range, and a long list of other improvements. I’ve been hearing the hype for years, but after spending a day exploring the company’s prototypes, I’m starting to believe it.

“It was a big blow,” Elaphe CEO Gorazd Gotovac says of the Lordstown failure. “We have created all the structures within the company to be able to support them.” The engines went through the full legal homologation process, a huge and expensive task that came to absolutely nothing.

“We’re now building all of our future products on top of that,” says Gotovac. “So I’m still very grateful that this project was completed.”

All the time I spent testing these products took place on ice, which presents a great challenge for both car and driver. However, it started with the fruit of someone else’s engineering: A Ionic 5. Hyundai’s futuristic electric vehicle is a great machine, but it’s not exactly what I’d choose for a day of commuting.

Indeed, with the vehicle’s stability control systems activated, the Ioniq 5 is safe and controlled, but far from fun. When I tried to initiate the slide, the car’s power cut out dramatically and suddenly, resulting in a jerky and unsatisfying roll around a twisty, lake-plowed handling track.

With these systems turned off, I could spin the wheels without worrying about stalling the car every time I had a skid. However, in this mode, the car’s handling was unpredictable, and the tail would often spin without warning. When I tried to exit the slide, my nose would often push forward, trying to get me straight into the snow bank.

The Elaphe version of the same car ditches the car’s standard engines, differentials and other ancillaries, replacing them not with two but with four in-wheel motors rated at 188 horsepower and 1,254 pound-feet of torque each. This requires little modification to the car itself, although a custom suspension setup from German tuner KW is needed to handle the extra weight at the wheels.

However, the overall vehicle weight is within 30 pounds of stock, but it looks a lot smarter. In Elaphe’s Standard mode, the Ioniq 5 wasn’t particularly fun to cruise around the track. It was still reluctant to go fast, but now instead of jerkily cutting power at any sign of wheelspin, I gradually reduced the output of the four motors based on what I was trying to do.

When I tried to turn a corner when I was driving too fast, the car gradually cut off power and started using regenerative brakes on the inside wheels to pull the front of the car. When I loosened the steering wheel coming out of a corner, the car smoothly added more power.

This smoothness is due in part to the ability to experience stability in real-time since the motors are in the wheel, with no driveshafts or differentials in the way. And since there’s one on every corner, Elaphe can take advantage of that to dramatically change the way the car handles.

After a few laps of proving I knew my stuff on the snow, I was given a pass to try out Elaphe’s drift mode. Here, the engines still provide some assistance to help the car turn, modulate power again and retread from left to right. However, I had full access to the torque of all four motors, which was more than enough to light up the tires coming out of corners. The car was fun, turning, sliding and moving cleanly from corner to corner.

For a taste of what a hub-engined hybrid might look like, Elaphe introduced its latest prototype, a piece of American muscle with a 500-hp, 5.0-liter V8 powered by a pair of Elaphe in-wheel motors. The car’s back seat was replaced with a 9.0 kWh battery and all the electronics needed to control those front motors. Add in some sophisticated vehicle dynamics software and you’ve got a recipe for a very good time.

With those engines disabled, the car struggled to even accelerate on polished ice, spinning its rear tires like crazy. Trying to execute a series of slow turns was a huge challenge. With the enablement of front engines, everything changed. Now, the car pulled cleanly down the same stretch of shiny ice, and was able to turn left and right without issue, with the front engines using or regenerating power as needed.

On the track handling was a bit lacking, but it was a lot of fun. I again tested all the different driving modes, and it got progressively wilder but never uncontrollable.

In the case of the large American coupe, there is a significant increase in the weight of the car, as a battery had to be brought. But Gotovac says electric cars designed from the ground up for these motors could be smaller, lighter, and cheaper by removing the internal motors and related drivetrain components.

While the overall car will become lighter, there is one area where weight will increase: the wheels themselves. The weight there, called unsprung mass, makes the car’s suspension work twice as hard. This can have a negative impact on everything from handling to ride quality.

Interestingly, the precise wheel speed control enabled by placing these motors in the wheels means that Elaphe-powered cars can actually mitigate this problem themselves. “I can dampen my vibrations by using the motor inside the wheel instead of the active damper,” Jotovac says, again cutting cost and weight.

But the big question is when can we see this technology in a widespread market? Gotovac says Elaphe is working on projects with several OEMs, especially those focused on performance, and that we will see the first vehicles in a few years.

Some of the first cars powered by the Elaphe engine will be hybrids, with larger projects to come after 2030, including performance-oriented electric cars. Unfortunately, the details of those details are kept in a web of non-disclosure agreements.

I’ll need more details before I can be optimistic about the company, but I was certainly impressed with what I saw and experienced in Sweden. Both cars performed far beyond my expectations, and while there is still a question about the ride quality on the road, in terms of grip and handling, these things feel supernatural.