The industry has moved from designing the e-motor as an individual component in the system, to adopting a system’s approach and designing the e-motor to fit into the wider system. Though beneficial in many ways, system integration can present some challenges to the motor producer, so it’s important for companies to know the most effective ways to design the e-motor in relation to the entire system.

Ahead of the E-Motor Technologies 2024 conference, Automotive IQ interviewed Dr. Fabio Dohr, Head of Platform Portfolio Electric Vehicle Drives at ZF Group to understand how the complete powertrain system can be optimised from a system-level approach.

“There are several e-motor technologies available at the moment. The question is, will there be a consolidation and if so, in favour of which technologies? Furthermore, there is not much standardisation yet. As a result of that, there is still a broad variety of requirements, like when it comes to packaging. This can be challenging, especially for a Tier-1, as reuse across customers is crucial to be successful, but on the other hand, this is a great chance to create scale effects. Typically, something an OEM has much more limit in. We at ZF tackle this challenge with a modular kit approach which is the basis for all our customer projects.” - Dr. Fabio Dohr