Dr. Ali Emadi, chief executive officer of Enedym, poses with two of the company’s switch reluctance motor (SRM) drives.Supplied
Most electric vehicles have motors that use permanent magnets made with rare earth elements. These magnets make EV motors quieter and more efficient and are what give the vehicles their instant acceleration.
The 17 metals that make up the group of rare earth elements aren’t really rare but are difficult to find in their pure form. But a significant number of these rare earths come from China and getting them out of the ground and processing them is damaging to the environment. Mining just one ton of rare earth elements produces up to 2,000 tons of toxic waste, according to a report in the Harvard International Review. It’s an unsustainable practice that needs a solution as the demand for these elements continues to rise.
China’s dominance of the rare earth market is also an issue. China recently introduced export controls on seven rare earth metals to all countries, which threatens to drive up their cost. Some automakers such as Tesla, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan are trying to find alternatives to rare-earth powered motors to reduce their reliance on China.
Enter Enedym, a Hamilton-based startup that’s developing an electric motor with the same power and reduced noise level as the permanent magnet version, but without the use of rare earths. Enedym’s switched reluctance motor (SRM) uses only electrical steel, copper and iron.
A close up view of the Enedym’s switch reluctance motor, which does not use permanent magnets.Supplied
“We focused on solving the permanent magnet issue with cost and supply chain by inventing new families of electric motors that do not need permanent magnets,” says Enedym’s chief executive officer Ali Emadi, a professor at McMaster University and one of the leading experts in electric powertrains. Enedym is partly owned by McMaster University and is based at the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre, which hosts one of the largest academic automotive programs in North America.
Electric motors consist of a stationary housing called a stator and an element that rotates inside it called a rotor. The stator contains loops of copper or aluminum windings that create a rotating magnetic field (RMF) when current is applied to it. This RMF induces a current in the rotor, causing it to spin and generate torque output. Permanent magnet motors use magnets mounted on or embedded within the rotor to generate a magnetic field without a current being applied, increasing their efficiency.
The windings in the stator of a SRM are connected to the power electronics drive with solid-state switches. Each winding on the stator is switched on and off sequentially, forcing the rotor to align with the nearest energized stator pole, generating torque and causing it to spin without needing permanent magnets.
Emadi says that a SRM is one of the simplest and least expensive motor designs. It has also been around for a long time but is noisy and has lower torque and power density, making it uncompetitive with permanent magnet motors.
“We’ve solved all of this,” Emadi says. “Our motors are very simple, but the software and control for them is amazingly complex.”
Motor technology is only half of the company’s focus. Enedym’s strength is its digitization software platform, which allows it to rapidly design and prototype new motors.
Dr. Ali Emadi testing Enedym motors on the company’s virtual driving simulator at MARC.Supplied
“It’s a multiphysics, multidomain, [artificial-intelligence-enabled] software tool that we did over 10 years at McMaster University,” says Emadi. The software allows engineers to design, optimize and test a new motor design in a couple of weeks. Other companies can take more than nine months to do it using traditional methods.
Designing electric motors is a complex task that requires teams of engineers from varying disciplines such as electromagnetic, thermal, electronic and mechanical. Emadi says it’s time-consuming and expensive and the process isn’t efficient because each team works sequentially.
“It’s a bottleneck for companies that don’t do many designs. They do one design once in a while and then manufacture the heck out of it,” says Emadi. “We give the engineers better tools to design, develop and optimize much faster.”
This speed gives Enedym the ability to tackle multiple industries at once and the company has more than 80 patents and patents pending for its technology and software.
In one prototype, the company replaced the permanent magnet motor in a Cadillac Lyriq EV with one of its designs. It was part of a GM-sponsored student competition called EcoCAR, which pits 15 universities across North America against each other in a four-year challenge to design the next generation of electric vehicles and mobility solutions.
Enedym also has a contract with a major manufacturer they can’t disclose to build motors for electric scooters and motorcycles slated for the Asian market. It also has a collaboration with Toyota Tsusho on electric luggage tow tractors, with prototypes in operation at Hamilton Airport.
Enedym is also working on the next generation of wind-pitch motors that adjust the pitch angle of the blades on wind turbines.
Enedym is also involved in the new rapid prototyping facility at the Innovation Centre called FARM (Facility for Advanced Rapid Manufacturing), where it designs and builds motors, power electronics, controllers and software. Where some companies can spend a year developing one motor design and mass producing it, FARM can output 25 or more different designs for many different industries and applications over six months.
This manufacturing flexibility allows Enedym to pivot to different domains quickly, which Emadi says is important in the current political climate, especially when tariffs seriously threaten the auto industry.
“Development is expensive, design is expensive, but you cannot tariff these things,” says Emadi, referring to the software, design and development.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the Toyota Tsusho company name.