Technology: The "Motor Wheel"

Okay... Everyone here probably heard by now of the Avro case, the famous canadian plane and source of conspiration theories at times...

But we had in Quebec a recent one, the 90s.... Hydro-Quebec (a subsidiary, it seems) developed a supposedly 'revolutionary' motor-wheel, who was not used a lot.... It spurned many discussions, and similar conspiration theories about how 'the car/petroleum industry tried to suppress it'... A recent documentary spoke of it, here.

So.. thread. What if it was adopted by the industry? WOULD and COULD it have been adopted, was it actually overrated and not so good or as revolutionary as claimed?

And in general, not just this case, was this very idea feasable as common tech, usefull good?
 
What was it? What did it run on, what did it do, what operational constraints does it have? That would obviously have serious effects on defining possible answers to the questions you ask.
 
So..it's a standard electric motor, but directly driving the wheel of the car, instead of a drivetrain? Well, sure, there's an advantage over conventional cars: it's the electric engine. Drive train losses are on the order of 5% (mechanical gears are very efficient power transmitters when well-designed and well-meshed) compared to the inefficiencies of turning gasoline's chemical energy into kinetic energy via a combustion engine, which is something like 30% efficient. Still, I'm not sure it's a significant advantage. Maybe it'll see some use once electric cars get bigger and it'd allow some nifty layouts (I seem to recall a "skateboard" car concept with these driven by drive-by-wire so you could swap chasis onto a fixed skateboard to go from a minivan to a sedan to a light truck just by switching the passenger frame), but for the moment..eh. This engineering student is unimpressed, though I am aero/astro, not automotive.
 
Apparently wheel-hub motors allow better regenerative braking, although you'd still need to have traditional brakes as well.
 
The main problems are unsprung weight and RPM management (electric motors are rather inefficient at high RPM, such as the wheels may attain at motorway speeds; usually, this is managed through the gearbox acting as a de/multiplier, but hub motors have no gearbox).
 
Well unsprung weights are being reduced as designers look at coreless designs, eliminating the weight of the traditional iron core, and thus significantly reducing the overall weight of the motor. The motor wheel also allows a reduction in petrol (or other fuel) use since the motor will now be charging an alternator, and thus will be allowed to remain in its 'sweet spot', rather than being forced to go faster or slower as the driver needs.
 
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