Continental and Deepdrive to Develop Wheel Hub Drive With Integrated Brake

Continental has entered a strategic partnership with Munich-based high-tech company DeepDrive to develop core technologies for electric vehicles. As a first milestone, both companies will jointly develop a combined unit comprising drive and brake components for mounting directly on the vehicle wheel.

DeepDrive is a specialist in the development of efficient electric motors, with many years of experience in large-scale automobile production. Continental, in turn, contributes its technological know-how in brake systems and its expertise in the industrialization of innovative technologies.

We are convinced that the development of our dual-rotor motor will revolutionize the electrification of motor vehicles. The strategic partnership with Continental makes it possible to combine our drive system with the brake technology needed to create an innovative electric component essential to the mobility of tomorrow. The soaring demand for such technology demonstrates that this is the right way to go.

—Felix Poernbacher, co-founder and managing director of DeepDrive

Both companies see great potential in their collaboration as the electrification of vehicles makes it possible in the future to place all chassis functions, including the drive, directly on the wheel. In order to best implement the different requirements of electric vehicles, such as maximize the range while minimizing installation space and simultaneous modularity, comprehensive optimization at vehicle level is necessary. The optimal coordination of brake and drive system makes a decisive contribution here.

 

The integration of both elements in one unit enables a particularly high level of efficiency in the drive and when braking. Moreover, integrated components reduce complexity through modularization and facilitate the manufacturing process.

DeepDrive has developed and patented a dual-rotor, radial-flux motor that can be installed as a central drive unit or as a wheel hub drive in series production vehicles. The partnership is focusing on developing an efficient, compact wheel hub drive optimized with a view to cost-effective production.

 

The patented DeepDrive dual-rotor, radial flux machine combines an inner and outer rotor with two air gaps and benefits from very high material utilization and lowest iron losses. The key enabler for the dual-rotor concept is a new distributed winding concept with a slot-filling factor above 80%.

Continental is contributing not only brake components for the joint drive-brake unit—with its expertise in industrializing products right through to series development, the company is ensuring that the motor innovation from Munich will be road-ready with state-of-the-art brake technology soon.

In the first step, a hydraulic brake is integrated into the drive-brake unit. In a second step, it is also planned to integrate on the long-term dry braking systems without hydraulic components into DeepDrive's innovative wheel hub drive. The combination of drive and brake in one unit is also the first step towards a corner module with integrated chassis components, such as air suspension systems from Continental, in a compact unit directly on the wheel.

 

The collaboration between the companies was initiated by Continental’s Corporate Venture unit (co-pace). The Corporate Venture unit also participated in the Munich-based company as a financial investor in a Series-A financing of DeepDrive that was completed at the beginning of the year.