Daimler Truck and Gehring Technologies signed an agreement for the development of electric motors specifically for commercial vehicles. Gehring is known as the maker of traction drive in electric vehicles.
This includes construction for the “truck-e-fied” prototype as well as further development and testing of new production processes. “Truck-e-fied” is called differently from the electric truck electric drive units that Daimler Trucks use.
“This design combines the characteristics of an efficient electric motor with high automation capabilities and process reproducibility – essential prerequisites for large-scale automotive production,” writes Daimler Truck.
It is known that suppliers mainly rely on hairpin technology for the stator. Here, solid copper rods in the shape of the eponymous hairpin form the coils for the stator electromagnet, which ensures a higher copper charge rate compared to coils made of wound copper wire – and thus a higher energy density.
Gehring will also supply equipment for the technical center being established at the Gaggenau plant, Daimler Truck’s center of competence for electric drive components.
“As part of our overview of the future targets of our German Power Systems website, InnoLabs plays an important role: analyzing future powertrains in terms of their specific commercial vehicle applications and testing innovative production methods and processes,” said Yaris Pürsün, global head of powertrain components production. at Daimler Trucks. “The deal with Gehring for a ‘truck-e-fied’ e-motor is an important component here.”
Bernd Nagel, partner and CEO of Gehring Group, added: “For a long time, we have experienced that coordinated product development and manufacturing processes at an early stage lead to high-performance production systems. We are even more excited to be working with Daimler Trucks to deepen our hairpin technology especially for truck and bus electric powertrains.”
As part of a partnership that ended in May with engineering firm Manz, Daimler Truck will set up its own pilot production facility for battery cells in the form of the “InnoLab Batteries” located at the Mannheim plant.
