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The team over at Munro Live have been tearing down a rear drive unit from the Lucid Air and were impressed with the innovations that they found in its inner workings. The video features Munro President Cory Steuben and Engineer Walker Lee showing us through the RDU's component parts and compare them with counterparts from Tesla, Ford and Rivian.
The rear drive unit from the upcoming Lucid Air Sapphire is essentially a pair of Air RDUs joined together with the capability to send more than 1200 horsepower to the vehicle's rear wheels.
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RDU Differential: Small but Mighty
Beginning with the RDU's differential, the pair marvel at the component's compact size and discuss its placement in the centre of the assembly with a set of planetary reduction gears on either side of it leading to the wheel hubs. Calling the setup "really refined," Steuben and Lee tell us that the differential's symmetrical placement within the motor means that it is subject to reduced loads compared to competitors and say that they're amazed that Lucid can pack this much power (669 horsepower) into such a compact package.
"We've never seen anything quite like that."
Other aspects of the drive unit's design that receive praised from the Munro Live team are the oil cooling channels built into the motor's laminate stack and the continuous wave winding that brings the number of welds down from 200 on other motors to just 24 in the Air. This reduces the likelihood of inconsistent welds and further boosts efficiency.
Continuous wave winding as shown in Lucid's Tech Talks series.
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Using the metric of cost per kW of power produced, the Munro Live team calls the Lucid Air's rear drive unit the best and most power-dense currently on the market. Check out the full video below.
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Images by Lucid Motors licensed by CC BY 4.0.
James Walker is an Automotive Journalist at Torque News focusing on Lucid Motors. If it's got wheels he's interested, and he's looking forward to seeing what kind of cars the EV revolution brings us. Whether it's fast, slow, new, or old, James wants to have a look around it and share it in print and on video, ideally with some twisty roads involved. You can connect with James on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
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