One of the big advantages of electric vehicles is their greater freedom when it comes to packaging. Batteries go where it makes the most sense in terms of stability and safety. Electric motors are compact and don’t need much cooling compared to a combustion engine, and there’s no exhaust to worry about.
Putting the motors close to the wheels makes sense—in the wheel itself if possible—and it seems that a startup called Donut Labs may have solved some of the problems hub-mounted motors have faced in the past.
You can see where the name came from—the motors look like metal donuts. That originally had me thinking they used axial flux technology, as some hybrid supercars do, but I was mistaken. These are radial flux motors, just ones that make a lot of torque considering their size and mass.
Source : https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/02/these-compact-electric-motors-could-revolutionize-ev-design/
