With the start of ID.3 production, VW is revealing more details about its MEB electric motor. It is planning to produce ‘up to 1.4 million electric drives’ and it can fit in a gym bag.

The German automaker unveiled the ID.3, a small electric hatchback, in September earlier this year.

It’s the first electric car built on VW’s new MEB platform, which they designed to support several new electric models.

Last month, VW announced the official start of production of the ID.3 at its Zwickau plant in Germany.

It’s only the first of many vehicles and now the German automaker is planning the entire supply chain with critical parts.

Several models will share electric motors and today, VW released some new details about the motor.

It is produced at VW’s component site in Kassel and at a Chinese plant in Tianjin. With the two factories combined, they plan to have a capacity of up to 1.4 million electric motors per year starting in 2023.

VW also makes the rotor and stator at its component plant in Salzgitter.

Here are some images of their electric motor, which they say is small enough to “fit in a gym bag”:

Electric drive type „APP 310“. Compact enough to fit in a sports bag – the electric drive for Volkswagen’s ID.3.

VW says that the drive unit in the ID.3 “weighs only around 90 kg and can generate a peak output of up to 150 kW (204 PS)”.

The automaker wrote about the motor:

“The rotor and stator are produced at the component plant in Salzgitter. New hairpin technology has enabled the use of an innovative production process for the assembly of the stator, whereby the spaces within the laminated core of the stator are optimally filled with flat preformed copper coils. This increases the torque density and the efficiency of the electric drive in comparison to that of a drive with wound copper wire coils. Maximum torque is achieved even at a low engine speed, which means that a 1-speed gearbox is sufficient for the entire rotational speed range. Both the electric drive and the 1-speed gearbox are produced at the component plant in Kassel.”

Like all other electric motors, the MEB motor is much less complex than conventional petrol or diesel engines and it contains a fraction of the number of parts you would find in an internal combustion engine.

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