Development of Small Size,

Light Weight and High Power

IPM Motor for Electric Vehicle
AKIRA NISHIO* 1
MASAHIRO HIRANO*1
YOSHIKI KATO* 1
TAKAYUKI IRIE*2
TSUTOMU BABA*3

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd (MHI) has recently developed small-size, light-weight and high-power IPM
motor and inverter for electric vehicles. This paper describes the system configuration of the electric vehicle and
hybrid vehicle and the technologies used for the small-size, light-weight and high-power IPM motor and inverter
developed by MHI for electric vehicles. With the skillful arrangement of permanent magnets, optimized combination
of rotor poles/stator slots, adoption of concentrated winding, etc., the motor is designed to ensure high current den-
sity, high torque constant and high power factor in order to realize high power, approximately 2.5 times higher, in
terms of power/volume ratio, than the conventional motor. Realization of small size and light weight has also been
achieved in inverter through optimization of water-cooling structure and by integrating the power circuit and the
control circuit in one board.

been drawn to the IPM (Interior Permanent Magnet)

1. Introduction motor suitable for high-speed rotation and capable of
Because of the environmental problems such as ex- being made smaller in size, lighter in weight and higher
haustion of natural resources, increase in the emission in efficiency than the induction motor.
of carbon dioxide, etc., developments are being actively MHI has recently developed small-size, light-weight
carried out recently in electric vehicles (EV), hybrid elec- and high- power IPM motor and inverter for electric ve-
tric vehicles (HEV) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). hicle by making an effective use of its long amassed
Motors for driving these vehicles are demanded to be technologies for the development of the conventional
smaller in size, lighter in weight and higher in power in servo-motor and amplifier. This paper describes the sys-
order to improve fuel consumption and to ensure larger tem configuration of electric vehicle and hybrid electric
space inside the vehicles. There is particularly a high vehicle, the technologies used for small-size, light-weight
demand for high power and high efficiency from the low- and high-power IPM motor and inverter developed by
speed rotation zone (region) through the high-speed MHI for electric vehicles, and the product specifications.
rotation zone.
With the rare earth magnet having its performance 2. Outline of System Configuration
improved and cost reduced in recent years, attention has Fig. 1 shows the system configuration of electric ve-

Battery Battery Battery Battery

Generator Inverter
Inverter Generator Inverter Inverter
Power
dividing
mechanism Motor
Engine Motor/
Motor Motor Engine Generator
Engine

Electric vehicle Hybrid electric vehicle Hybrid electric vehicle Hybrid electric vehicle
(series type) (parallel type) (series & parallel type)
Fig. 1 System configuration of electric vehicle and hybrid electric vehicle
The electric vehicle and hybrid electric vehicle are classified mainly in 4 types of system.

*1 Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

*2 Takasago Research & Development Center, Technical Headquarters Technical Review Vol.40 No.5 (Oct. 2003)
*3 Seiryo Engineering
1
hicle and hybrid electric vehicle (series type, parallel type weight and higher in power it is necessary to increase the
and series & parallel type) energy density, the volume ratio to the output power of
The electric vehicle uses a motor as power source and the motor. And in order to increase the motor energy den-
operates only by the power from the battery. At the time sity, the following three points must be taken into account.
of speed reduction (slowdown) or at downgrade hill drive, (1) High current density
the motor works as a generator, regenerating power to In case of a conventional IPM motor, excessive flow
the battery. The battery of this system is replaced with of current brings about magnetic saturation, leading
a fuel cell in the case of a fuel all electric vehicle. to a drastic change in inductance. So, it was not pos-
The hybrid electric vehicle, on the other hand, uses sible to flow excessive current. Further, it has a
two power sources: engine and motor. There are mainly characteristic of the inductance getting sharply in-
three types of hybrid electric vehicle. creased when the current lead angle gets large at the
The series type uses the engine to operate the gen- time of field-weakening control (Fig.Fig. 4
4). As is obvi-
erator, and the generated power is used for driving the ous in equation (1), these characteristics cause the
motor for traveling. In the case of parallel type, the en- terminal voltage of the motor to increase at the time
gine plays main role for traveling. In some cases, the of high-speed rotation. Since there is an upper limit
engine is used as a power source to charge the battery, for the inverter output voltage in relation to the bat-
therefore the motor gets activated and works as an aux- tery voltage, no more current can be flowed if the
iliary at the time of start or acceleration. The series & motor terminal voltage exceeds the said upper limit.
parallel type is a combination of series type and parallel
type and uses both motor and generator, with motor be-
ing used for low-speed drive. At a speed above a certain where;
level the engine starts operation, and keeps on travel- V a: Motor terminal voltage [Vrms]
ing while generating power when the drive load gets R a: Motor winding resistance [ Ω ]
light. i d, i q: Current in d, q axes [A]
In the aforesaid system types the motor and inverter L d, L q: Inductance in d, q axes [H]
work as a substitute or an auxiliary for the engine, so ω : Electrical angular velocity [rad/sec]
that they are demanded to be smaller in size, lighter in ψa: Armature flux linkage due to permanent
weight and higher in efficiency in order to improve fuel magnet [Wb]
consumption and to ensure low emission of exhaust gas.
80 : With 33 kW motor (mounted)
The effect of improvement in fuel consumption of a
Fuel consumption improvement rate (%)

: With 8 kW motor (mounted)

hybrid electric vehicle is shown in Fig. 2 (1), indicating 70
that the higher the motor power, the larger the effect of 60
improvement in fuel consumption. Since a hybrid elec-
50
tric vehicle needs both motor and engine, the installation
place for motor and inverter is limited, so that small- 40
size, light-weight and high-power motor and inverter are 30
indispensable.
20
3. Technologies for Small Size, Light Weight and High
10
Power
0
Fig. 3 shows an example of the newly developed mo- 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
tor and inverter for electric vehicle. Engine displacement ( x 1 000 cc)
3-1 Motor Fig. 2 Mileage/Liter(1)
The higher the motor power, the greater the effect of improvement in fuel cost.
The motor for electric vehicle is required of the op-
eration up to a high-speed zone (area). Hence, the
conventional servo motor type surface permanent mag- Motor Inverter

net motor (SPM motor) with the magnet pasted on the

surface gives rise to a problem of the fly-off of the mag-
net due to the centrifugal force at high speed zone and
demagnetization resistance because of field-weakening
control. We have therefore adopted the IPM motor where
the magnet is embedded inside. The IPM motor has an
advantage that it can maintain high power up to the high
speed zone by making use of field-weakening control. Fig. 3 Motor and inverter for electric vehicle
In order to make a motor smaller in size, lighter in Shows the example of the motor and inverter developed for electric vehicle.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

Technical Review Vol.40 No.5 (Oct. 2003)
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 3.5 With the rotor diameter, winding system and the
: Conventional IPM motor
: IPM motor newly developed by MHI other electrical characteristics being equivalent, it is
3
Inductance (relative value)

necessary to increase the number of poles in order to

2.5 increase the torque constant.
Further, with the stator diameter, thickness and
2
number of poles being equivalent, the torque constant
1.5 Sharp increase of inductance is proportional to the number of winding turns. In
order to increase the number of winding turns, it is
1
necessary to increase the cross-section of the slot, the
0.5 No increase of inductance winding groove,; and in case the number of slots is
the same, the preliminary condition for the above will
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 be the small cross-section of the tooth of 1 piece of
Lead angle (deg)
slot. Taking the aforesaid factors into consideration,
MHI carried out optimization of the combination of
Fig. 4 Armature inductance vs. current lead angle
The MHI IPM motor has the armature inductance hardly increased even pole number and slot number.
when the current lead angle gets increased. In the case of a motor with optimized numbers of
poles and slots, the winding factor against the funda-
In the case of MHI IPM motor, however, the mag- mental magnetic flux can be brought closer to 1 by
net arrangement is carefully devised in order to reduce adjusting the opening width of the slot, and the wind-
the inductance as well as to raise the limit of mag- ing factor against the high-frequency magnetic flux
netic saturation. Further, the rise in motor terminal can also be reduced to ensure high torque constant.
voltage is controlled by minimizing the change in in- MHI takes account of this fact, and has optimized
ductance even when the current lead angle gets large the width of slot opening to ensure high torque.
at the time of field-weakening control in high-speed (3) High power factor
rotation zone, ensuring high current density. In the case of a conventional IPM motor, the in-
(2) High torque constant ductance in q-axis is large and the effect of armature
As is clear from equations (2) and (3), increasing reaction is also large, causing the power factor to get
the motor torque constant (armature flux linkage due decreased when a large torque is generated. The MHI
to permanent magnet) to increase the energy den- IPM motor, however, has the distance between the
sity has conventionally been avoided since it results permanent magnet embedded in the rotor and the
in high electro-motive force (e.m.f.). However, the ac- rotor surface optimized to reduce the q-axis induc-
tive utilization of field-weakening control can tance to ensure high power factor even when the
increase the torque constant for realization of a high- generated torque is large.
power motor. Besides, MHI IPM motor has slot-saving winding
system and adopts the concentrated winding that can
be carried out using an automatic machine. Further,
the motor has been made smaller in size by adopting
where; water cooling system instead of the forced air cooling
T : Torque [Nm] used in the conventional servo motor.
P n: The number of motor pole pairs A comparison between the conventional servo mo-
K e: Electro-motive force constant [Vrms/rpm] tor and the newly developed IPM motor is shown in
N : Rotational speed [rpm] Table 11. By using the aforesaid technologies, the

Table 1 Comparison of motor main specification

Motor for electric vehicle

No. Item Conventional servo motor
(example)
1 Rated power (kW) 40 22
2 Rated input current (Arms) 133 120
3 Maximum output power (kW) 75 47
4 Maximum input current (Arms) 340 310
5 Volume (m3) 0.0141 0.0242
6 Weight (kg) 58 76
7 Cooling system Water cooling Forced air cooling
8 Structure Waterproof specification -

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

Technical Review Vol.40 No.5 (Oct. 2003)
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 Table 2 Comparison of inverter main specification

No. Item Inverter for electric vehicle Conventional servo motor

1 Rated output current (Arms) 133 138

2 Maximum output current (Arms) 340 345
3 Current control system Sinusoidal PWM control Sinusoidal PWM control
4 Input power (V) DC 288 AC 200 - 220
Totally enclosed/Water
5 Structure cooling system Forced air cooling

6 Weight (kg) 18 40
7 Volume (m3) 0.01734 0.05337

Inverter
Inverter board

Upper CAN Smoothing

controller Control circuit section condenser
Discharge
resistance
N

R1
Power circuit section + Battery
External interface
P

Power module
Current detector

W V U

Motor

Fig. 5 Inverter system configuration

Adopts the international standard CAN for communication with upper controller.

power/volume ratio has been increased to 2.5 times be reduced to one-third and the weight to half as com-
larger than that of the conventional servo motor. pared with the conventional servo amplifier with the
3-2 Inverter same power (output).
The main specifications of the inverter for electric ve-
hicle and the conventional servo amplifier are given in 4. Product Specifications
Table 2 and the internal configuration of inverter in Specifications of motors so far developed for electric
Fig
Fig.. 5 . The inverter largely differs from the conventional vehicle and hybrid electric vehicle are given in Tabl
ablee 3,
servo amplifier in (I) the adoption of CAN, the interna- indicating that the small size, light-weight and high-
tional standard for communication with upper controller power motor and inverter have been realized by using
and (II) the field-weakening control by means of current the technologies for small size, light weight and high
control. power mentioned in Section 3.
The conventional servo amplifier uses forced air cool- The rotational frequency (speed) vs. torque and power
ing system for cooling the power module, while the newly characteristics of Type 3 motor applied to parallel hy-
developed inverter uses water cooling in order to reduce brid system is shown in Fig. 6 6, while the system
the size. In addition, the water cooling system is designed configuration of the hybrid electric vehicle using this
to have optimized cooling fan to ensure small size and motor in Fig. 7
7. In this system, the battery voltage is 42
high efficiency. V and the motor has three functions working as a starter,
Furthermore, the inverter is designed to totally en- generator and auxiliary driving force at the time of start
closed and waterproof structure so as to be installed and acceleration. The use of MHI small-size, light-weight
inside the engine room. In addition to this, the power and high-power motor and inverter has been verified to
and control circuits are integrated into one board for less improve the fuel consumption by 40%.
wiring and small size to upgrade work efficiency at the
time of assembly. 5. Conclusion
By using the aforesaid technologies, the volume could We have so far described the technologies for small-

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

Technical Review Vol.40 No.5 (Oct. 2003)
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 Table 3 Specification of Motor for conventional (already developed) electric vehicle and hybrid electric vehicle

Item Type-1 Type-2 Type-3 Type-4

Maximum output power (kW) 100 33 13 35
Maximum torque (Nm) 250 82 90 197
Maximum rotational speed (rpm) 5 750 6 000 6 000 3 750
Case diameter/stator diameter*1 (mm) 320 280 238 330
Case length/stator length*1 (mm) 290 189 35 60
Cooling system Water cooling Water cooling Water cooling Water cooling
system system system system
Power voltage (V) 380 240 42 288
Applicable vehicle type Electric vehicle Hybrid Parallel hybrid Parallel hybrid
Type*2 Motor type Motor type Build-in type Build-in type
*1: Indicates case diameter and case length in the case of motor type and stator diameter and stator length
in the case of build-in type.
*2: Motor type indicates normal motor case type, while build-in type indicates the type installed to the engine case.

140 14

120 12 Inverter
: Power
100 10
Torque (Nm)

: Torque
Power (kW)

80 8
Battery
60 6

40 4
Engine
20 2 Motor
0
0 1 000 2 000 3 000 4 000 5 000
Rotational speed (rpm) Fig. 7 System of hybrid electric vehicle using Type-3 motor
Fig. 6 Speed vs. torque and power characteristics (Type-3) Battery voltage is 42V, and the motor carries out functions of starter,
Indicates the high power maintained over the high-speed zone. generator and auxiliary to driving force at start and acceleration.

size, light-weight and high-power motor and inverter We are determined to carry on our development mis-
developed by MHI for electric vehicles. The newly devel- sion to produce the motor and inverter smaller in size,
oped motor has realized a power about 2.5 times as large lighter in weight and higher in power, to improve reli-
as that of a conventional servo motor of equivalent vol- ability of our products and to widen the applicable vehicle
ume through skillful arrangement of permanent magnet, types.
optimization of rotor pole number/stator slot number,
adoption of concentrated winding, etc. Further, the in- Reference
verter has realized a volume as large as one-third of a (1) The Relation between Motor Generator Output Power and
Fuel Consumption Improvement, and Manufacture’s Cata-
conventional servo amplifier of equivalent power through
log Data, D & M Nikkei Mechanical, Nikkei BP No.573 (2002)
water-cooling structure and integration of control and p.81
power circuits in one board.
Furthermore, these technologies were used in the
motor and inverter for hybrid electric vehicle system,
and have been found to be substantially effective for
improving the fuel consumption.

Akira Nishio Masahiro Hirano Yoshiki Kato Takayuki Irie Tsutomu Baba

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

Technical Review Vol.40 No.5 (Oct. 2003)
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