The Triumph of the Electric Motor

By Mark Pesce

FOR THE PAST CENTURY, designers have weighed the trade-off s between engines and motors and have opted to use engines in almost anything that operates far from an electrical outlet. The choice adds considerably to complexity: A modern automobile engine may have thousands of individual components—two orders of magnitude more than the average electric motor. This means internal-combustion engines malfunction in ways an electric motor never could. We’ve long accepted this mechanical burden as the price for cutting the cord.

That calculus kept internal-combustion engines in the captain’s chair for almost all of the 20th century. Although about half of all electricity generated gets used to power electric motors of one sort or another, those many motors have historically been thought of as limited and limiting, an assessment now invalidated by a combination of better batteries (the result of manufacturing billions of smartphones) and smarter electronics. Today, electrifying a device that formerly required an engine means opening up the palette of possibilities to a product designer, who can now blend simplicity with sophistication.

No modern gadget makes that point as clearly as the recently unveiled fl ying taxi from Joby Aviation. The product of more than a decade of stealth R&D, it’s a cross between a small plane and a multicopter. Had Joby’s designers been forced to use internal-combustion engines, as some other fl ying-car companies have attempted, the craft would no doubt have been awkwardly complex, heavy, and much too loud. Instead, it uses sophisticated batteries and software to manage its six motors, making this eVTOL (electric vertical-takeoff and landing) craft relatively quiet and versatile. Distributed electric propulsion represents a new kind of design, one that we’ll surely see much more of, as aeronautical engineers explore the possibilities that arise when combining electric motors with electronic brains.

Only a decade ago we assumed internalcombustion engines would remain a permanent part of our world and invested huge resources in squeezing the last drops of effi ciency out of them. While they’ve had a good run, they’ve been pipped at the post now by electric motors.

The 20th century belonged to the engine, but the 21st century belongs to the motor, which is simple, silent, and smart. That combination changes everything about how our world works.

This article appears in the July 2021 print issue as “Engines of Change.” https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/batteriesstorage/the-triumph-of-the-electric-motor Image credit: evtol.com