Preliminary Design of Rare-Earth-Free Electric Traction Motor

In recent years, the European Union has introduced policies aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, such as the "European Green Deal", which includes achieving Net-Zero Emissions (NZE) by 2050 . The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) plays a key role in this effort. The success of EV sales has significantly increased the demand for critical raw materials such as lithium and cobalt for batteries, as well as rare earth elements (REEs) used in electric motors (EMs) . Additionally, the prices of these materials are subject to high volatility [3]. Finding solutions to limit and/or recycle the use of these materials is essential for a sustainable future. This thesis presents the development of a Permanent Magnet-Assisted Syn- chronous Reluctance Machine (PM-SyRM) for automotive applications, de- signed without the use of REEs. Specifically, three ferrite-based PM-SyRM pro- totypes are investigated: one for standard-speed operation, followed by two medium - to high-speed designs. These motors are required to meet key performance indicators (KPIs), expressed in per-unit (p.u.), as specified by Stellantis N.V. A solution is proposed to address challenges such as demagnetization and the low energy product (BH) of ferrite magnets. The design is carried out within the open-source platform "SyR-E", which combines analytical equations and finite element analysis (FEA) in a hybrid approach. The use of the (x, b) design plane and the scaling (L, Ns) plane enables accurate preliminary motor evaluation and significantly accelerates the design process. For each motor, the final outcome comprises the operational limits and the efficiency map.