The world's first drive system concept | Universal Wheel Drive System

What if we take the CV joint, drive shaft, and reducer and move them all into the wheel? Then split the motor into smaller components and move them into each wheel?
Introducing the Universal Wheel Drive System! It’s a ‘functionally integrated wheel’ that completely changes the drivetrain paradigm.

#Hyundai motor group #drivetrain #drivesystem #UNIWHEEL #Techday #FutureMobility #PBV

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[kevinkasimov]

Interesting. We’ll have to see how it survives in real-world conditions, including going over potholes and going off-road.

[Digital-Dan]

The usual concern about such things is additional unsprung weight. I also wonder about cost of repair when relatively minor impacts with wheels occur. Interesting.

[benigo]

I couldn’t help but notice they still had to use one cv joint on each front wheel for turning. So on a 4wd car with 2 wheel steering they are reducing the number of cv joints from 8 to 2, but not eliminating them completely like the video seemed to be saying. Also on a fwd car it would only reduce the number of cv joints from 4 to 2.

[apnudi]

I really love this idea. Cars are basically the shell and internals, wheels are all about the power and ride. It's so modular that all manufacturers could get onboard

[JackdeDuCoeur]

All the allowed motion is in one plane. How is steering accomplished?

[MrLightingbird]

Only when you let go of old habits can you make room for real new possibilities! Keep innovating!

[Alek]

Nice work guys! Hope to see this in production cars soon.

[BeakHsu]

I just wanna know, how to cool down and lubricate the gears ? How to seal the giant open gap and keep the shaft movable under extreme conditions such as water, dirt and rocks.

[Tiger.]

Possibly a brilliant innovation. However, I suspect durability could be a potential tradeoff. For example, taking a pot hole or speed bump at some speed looks like it would result in the system violently reaching its limits of travel and becoming easy to damage in many ways. Also, I wonder if going through some water or mud could get debris into the system. The video seems to breeze over the comparison part and just says the system performed "satisfactorily, " which implies just okay enough but likely a step back. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

[geonbugman]

But... You still need a CV joint between the uniwheel and the drive motor to account for steering. The uniwheel only allows an up and down movement in a single plane. Otherwise the design is top notch. Good job Hyundai!!

[TheGatesshrack]

Humvee’s use a gearbox at the wheel, very interesting engineering feat. My biggest question is how you seal that input shaft through its range of motion? followed by how is it lubricated? I would assume a serviceable gear oil fill of some form? I don’t know why I’m asking as if I’m going to get a response 😂

[roberthigbee]

This is Uni-Dumb. Go to time mark 4:22 where you'll see a close up of the electric motor plus uni-wheel and you will see that the power train assembly still has the constant velocity (CV) joint that they just spent time trashing! The CV joint is needed in their design to handle the angular wheel movement incurred when you turn the car left or right (angular movement of wheels is conveniently left out of this video).

Notice how the parts of this video showing how the uni-wheel works only show it handling deflection in 2 axis - up/down & forward/back but not angular deflection.

Keeping those extra small uni-wheel gears sealed and lubed and working for 200, 000 miles will be a challenge. Also, I'll bet it was a challenge counteracting the outermost planetary gear's tooth separating force that wants to cause the outer planetary gear to move inwards and disengage. What counteracting force keeps that outer planetary pushed outward, the torque somehow? I Would love to see that force diagram.

Solution - Guys, you gotta include the electric motor in your uni-wheel hub to make it a complete self-contained powered drive module that moves with the wheel. Then you can get rid of that overly complicated gazillion spur gear uni-wheel mechanism and just use a traditional planetary (1 central sun, 3 plant gears & 1 ring gear). You can also get rid of the CV joint entirely. This true uni-wheel would be powered electrically by a beefy but flexible and shielded-from-the-elements power cable that will flex as the wheel both turns left/right and also when it moves up/down. You will get even more interior room with this suggested design, it will be more mechanically robust, and it will cost less money.

Back to the CAD terminal Hyundai!

[s_attila]

I see it as a very interesting concept, but I think it creates more problems than it solves. In my opinion there are lots to solve: sealing between the axle and the hub, between the outer drum and the hub. Also having the motor turn with the wheel seems simple but it's not: you need to align the motor with the steering angle of the wheel and at the same time to separate them in the vertical direction, so this needs an additional mechanism with probably lots of parts. The steering/pivot axis of the wheel/hub assembly changes as the suspension is compressed as does the camber angle of the wheel. Also steering response would be worse given that the motors need to pivot/move when you turn the steering wheel, it will behave as a sort of flywheel. A better solution would be with the cv joints but that still has the sealing issues.
Regarding power efficiency: the torque is transmitted through 5 gear pairs, in comparison in a Tesla Model S drivetrain you have 2 gear pairs, so I think efficiency will be much lower because of friction losses in the gears.

[NeoN-PeoN]

Even if it's not strong enough for regular cars, it would certainly work in many other smaller applications.

[mellissadalby]

That is a bold new concept, which shows great promise. I look forward to seeing how it turns out in Production and real-world use.

[ElectricGlider]

Waiting for Jason from Engineering Explained on his honest thoughts on this new drivetrain design.

[brother-In-Christ]

Proud to own a 21 Elantra, part of a company making judt insane strides in innovation and technology seemingly unlike any other manufacturers

[etuke]

how are they gona lubricate these gears with the motion needed for input shaft and rotation of the outer wheel?

[TexoFlashbacksDK]

Is it only me or it does somehow resemble the Unimog’s portal axles, hub reduction and torque tubes concept back from the 50s?

[JasonBerkopes]

If this gets adopted, it makes me wonder what performance aftermarket applications will have to do to beef these up to take more power.