A handful of engineers working for Lucid Motors and Apple's electric vehicle projects have launched a new startup that puts fresh spin on electric hub motors.
A new startup called Conifer has developed a motor that is free from rare earth elements using a richer ferrite magnet. The company says it will not only reduce costs, but also limit supply chain risks. Conifer also says its own stator offers higher efficiency and power than comparable options while being half the size.
The company's timing – a new unstable era of tariffs and a trade war with China – is auspicious. And its technology has attracted some serious economic attention. Motors, and Conifer's approach to building it, helped build a $20 million seed round from many deep tech investors, including True Ventures, Mac Ventures, and MFV Partners. Rohit Sharma of True Ventures has joined the Conifer board meeting.
The conifers arrive on site as advances in the development of electric motors appear to be rapidly advancing. Companies such as Deep Drive in Germany and Donut Lab in Finland have adopted novel approaches to make electric motors more efficient, powerful and affordable. This all happens when batteries, which usually make up a large part of the cost of electric vehicles, are still cheaper, but haven't seen a clear, dramatic price drop 10 years ago.
Conifer initially targeted small mobility spaces with hub motors. This is advertised as “drop-in.” This means that customers can replace existing hub motors without major design changes. Chasing on-road and off-road vehicles with two, three or four wheels.
The company says it is attracting interest from lawn mowers and tractor manufacturers as well as HVAC companies. We already have a small number of global customers and will ship production motors later this year.
Ankit Somani, one of Conifer's co-founders, told TechCrunch in an interview that he was unhappy with the lack of investment and innovation in electric motors. He doesn't have the same background, like many of his colleagues, working for an electric car company, but he said he's closely guarding the space as an EV enthusiast.
“There's been a lot of investment in the battery technology segment all along, from the cathode, anode, and electrolytes. All in all. But it's not enough for the front of the powertrain.” “So we saw it as an opportunity from a market perspective. Hey, no one has thought about this enough.”
Image: Coniferous tree
That approach led to Conifer's new motor design and its manufacturing strategy. By using more common magnets, conifer trees aim to localize supply chains, focusing on manufacturing facilities. We also want to be able to build motors of different sizes on the same line to highly automate the production line and increase adaptability.
This highly automated, localized “microfactory” idea has stole a lot from companies like Arrivals.
Somani said Conifer's motors are less complicated than “one or two digits” than cars, which should reduce the risk of this approach. He then said that rather than trying to automate everything from the start, the company intentionally introduces automation into the production of certain subsystems like stators.
“That's the paper we're moving forward with,” he said. “We start with one country that makes this happen, and we can take it in different places depending on how local demand is achieved.”
But when it comes to Motors' sales, Somani said he has found it successful in putting aside many of these details about what the conifer is doing. After all, the company is a startup. And he said more established companies don't like the risk that startups exist.
Instead, he returns to the drop-in nature of the coniferous motor.
“We had wheels before, we had a hub motor, but we got a new wheel and just a drop-in replacement gives us a 10% range improvement. That's it.