Axial Flux Motor Powers Supercars to New Heights

Tesla was first to patent a primitive axial-flux electric motor—Nikola Tesla, that is, way back in 1889. It would be 126 years before the concept found its way to a car, the 1,500-horsepower (1,103 kilowatt), US $1.9 million, Koenigsegg Regera hybrid, in 2015. Even today, nearly all the world’s EVs and hybrids rely on relatively inefficient, easy-to-manufacture radial-flux motors.

Yet the latest electrified revolution is underway, led by YASA. Founded in the U.K. by Tim Woolmer in 2009, a spin-off…