BMW and Continental invest in Deepdrive

Deepdrive offers a dual-rotor electric motor that can be used as a central drive or as an in-wheel drive. BMW and Continental invest in the start-up company.

The radial flux dual-rotor electric motor includes power electronics and can be installed in any vehicle as a central drive or as an in-wheel drive. According to a BMW press release, the patented technology increases the range of vehicles, achieves high torque density, is cost-efficient to manufacture and requires fewer natural resources; in turn, reducing environmental impact. Serial production is planned for 2025.

"With its patented and unique e-motor architecture, Deepdrive could set new standards for e-mobility,” said Marcus Behrendt, Managing Director at BMW i Ventures. “The highly efficient e-motors offer major advantages in terms of weight, cost and space. They enable the next generation of efficient and resource-saving electric vehicles. Deepdrive's e-motor technology is designed for easy and cost-effective mass production. We are pleased that our involvement can help this new technology achieve a breakthrough."

The Deepdrive team is working with eight of the top ten OEMs and is on track to bring its technology to production by 2026. Co-founder and CEO Felix Poernbacher said: "We believe our technology will revolutionize vehicle electrification. With our dual-rotor technology, we are significantly more cost-effective and efficient on the road, shaping tomorrow's electromobility. The demand for our development shows that we are on the right track. We would like to thank BMW i Ventures, Continental's corporate venture capital unit, and the other investors for their confidence."

The RM 300 in-wheel motor propels vehicles in micro-mobility use cases with gross weights of 1200 kg and above. The integrated MOSFET inverter, the wheel hub unit, and the CAN interface make it to a plug-and-play solution for many applications. The motor features a 300-Nm peak torque, an 18-kW peak power, and a 13-kg weight. The noise emission is inaudible and a drum-brake integration is possible.

Continental and Infineon cooperate

Recently, Continental, an investor partner of Deepdrive, announced to cooperate with Infineon regarding zone control units (ZCU). The companies will collaborate in the development of server-based vehicle architectures. Continental now uses Infineon's Aurix TC4 micro-controller for its ZCU platform. Due to special storage technology in the Aurix TC4, the vehicle software is on stand-by. As soon as the vehicle is started, functions such as parking assistance, air conditioning, heating and suspension are ready within fractions of a second. With its platform approach, Continental is supporting the different requirements of the automobile manufacturers. By individually configuring the number of high-performance computers (HPC) and ZCUs, how they interact and how they are arranged in the vehicle, automobile manufacturers can individually tailor their architecture to their needs, explained Continental. The Aurix TC4 chips provide CAN FD interfaces and end of this year also CAN XL connectivity.

"With our new architecture solution, we are making the vehicle fit for the future," said Gilles Mabire from Continental Automotive. “The growing variety of vehicle functions requires more and more computing power and increasingly complex software applications. Continental's new architecture is paving the way for the software-defined vehicle. The cooperation with Infineon is an essential step in realizing this development quickly for our customers. Thanks to our platform strategy, proven application software can be used in new vehicle models, for instance. As a result, the time-consuming validation effort is significantly reduced. New functionalities can be brought into serial production much faster.”

The third generation of the Aurix MCU family offers the same scalability in terms of performance, memory, and housing variants as the previous generations. Among other things, Aurix TC4x was designed for usage in ZCU and HPC. Further focus applications are radar, chassis and safety and powertrain/electrification.

A key element of the MCU series is the RRAM (resistive random access memory) technology used by Infineon. This technology is already used successfully in chip cards, for example when doing cashless payments and for secure authentication. For the first time, RRAM technology is now applied in the automotive sector. According to a press release by Continental, the Aurix TC4x products enable effective, fast and safe exploitation of essential vehicle systems potential. When a vehicle is started, functions like parking assistance, air conditioning, heating and suspension are available within fractions of a second. Due to the MCU architecture, essential software programs are almost constantly on stand-by. In addition, it enables significantly faster and more secure over-the-air software updates.

"The cooperation with Continental makes it possible to bring RRAM technology into automobiles," said Peter Schiefer from Infineon. “Together with innovation drivers in the automotive industry like Continental, we are shaping the mobility of tomorrow. The micro-controller family Aurix TC4x is an important building block for the next generation of E/E architectures and can make the crucial difference when it comes to efficiency, safety and comfort in future vehicle generations.”

hz