Better for the world we live in

Motors

Tevva trucks are driven by next-generation electric traction motors. These motors, developed by Advanced Electric Machines in partnership with Tevva over four years, have multiple benefits over earlier, more commonly found designs.

No rare-earth magnets. Rare-earth magnets are found in most electric motors in use today, but they have four significant drawbacks.

• Sustainability – the mining of rare-earth metals produces a great deal of highly toxic waste.
• Cost – rare earth metals are both expensive and price volatile – Between March 2020 and March 2021, the cost of neodymium (the key rare-earth element used in motors) increased by 240%.
• Motor complexity – permanent magnet motors containing rare earths have a much higher need for cooling than motors without rare earths and that leads to more complex design and higher costs.
• Efficiency – a more efficient motor means more range from a given size of battery. The faster you can make a motor spin, the more efficient it will be. However, at higher speeds, motors containing rare earths run into difficulties in keeping them adhered to the fast spinning rotor. Additionally, the strong magnetic fields created give rise to a need to inject an offsetting electrical current into the stator. The elimination of these problems, by removing the rare earths, helps Tevva’s traction motor to achieve efficiency gains of up to 12%.

Range Extender

The Fuel Cell is liberator of the battery, not its nemesis.

Tevva’s Fuel Cell Range Extender Technology (REX) is unique. The Tevva technical design philosophy is that hydrogen and batteries are not alternatives to each other but partners in achieving an ideal solution. Batteries are the most efficient, lowest cost and lowest carbon option, but they are heavy and relatively slow to re-charge. Hydrogen is less cost efficient and less carbon efficient, but extremely lightweight and fast to replenish.

Tevva’s Fuel Cell REX operates only as much as is needed to supplement the grid-charged battery on any given day. It is designed to be controlled by software that predicts the daily energy need and then (if needed) runs the fuel cell at a constant, efficient power setting to feed the necessary additional energy into the battery over the course of the working day.