Construction of high efficiency motors normally requires the use of high performance, higher cost materials and/or larger amounts of materials. This increases the selling price of such motors and limits their potential applications in the marketplace. It is much more challenging to achieve high electric motor efficiency and overall performance when low-cost materials like ferrite magnets and aluminum conductors are used. However, this has recently been accomplished.

A new motor design approach was used to achieve high motor efficiency with these lower cost materials. This motor design is based on a dual-rotor axial flux machine, but has the same form factor as a standard radial motor. Efforts were made to reduce all aspects of the motor production cost, including material type, material volume, manufacturing processes, retrofitting of existing applications, and inventory requirements to meet worldwide demand in numerous applications.

Details regarding efficiency, performance, design approach, material usage, and manufacturing processes will be presented.