Eaton has announced that its Vehicle Group is developing EV gearing solutions, drawing on its experience in producing transmissions and contract-manufactured gear sets for passenger and commercial vehicles. The company’s new technology complements its eMobility power electronics portfolio in the EV powertrain market.

“We are partnering with OEM customers to leverage our expertise in simulation, design and manufacturing​ to optimize the efficiency, NVH [noise, vibration and harshness] and weight of high-precision gearing systems ​tailored to specific customer needs,” said Director Anthony Cronin.

Eaton’s services include total system analyses to create EV gearing solutions that are optimized for efficiency and reliability, with low noise and manufacturing costs. To optimize the gears, bearings and lubrication system, Eaton applies a series of in-house design and manufacturing techniques, including:

• Gear root geometry to optimize strength ​
• Micro and macro gear geometry modeling to improve NVH, efficiency and reliability
• Thrust load and bearing loss minimization​ to improve reliability and simplify or downsize bearings
• Simulation and selection of lubrication solutions for full-system reliability and efficiency  

Eaton says its engineers can evaluate existing layouts or develop “clean-sheet” solutions that work within a customer’s packaging constraint, and provide solutions for scaling the EV gearing layout for platforms with multiple torque requirements.

Eaton claims to have identified opportunities to improve gearing system efficiency by up to 1 percent, reduce weight by up to 20 percent and decrease size by up to 10 percent. These benefits can be applied to both light-duty and commercial electrified vehicles.  

Source: Eaton