If you spend time on social media, you’ll soon realize that not everybody is happy about the auto industry’s ongoing shifts to EVs, with even the manufacturers themselves beading sweat over initially uninspiring sales figures for pure BEVs, as opposed to hybrids. What’s impossible to deny is that this emerging frontier has directly led to a technological boom in the automotive world. Which is why you can’t help but be impressed by the deliciously simple idea that Hyundai has about maximizing space in tomorrow’s EVs. In a very real sense, Hyundai has reinvented the wheel.
Hyundai, along with Kia, have just unveiled what they call their Universal Wheel Drive System, which they refer to as the Uniwheel for short, an advance that has the potential to serious transform the way EVs are packaged. The EV puts the powertrain’s reduction gearset directly inside the previously empty space inside the wheel’s hub. This, therefore, is a completely new structure for the drive system, moving most of its components outboard into the hub and away from their current location under the vehicle’s floor. That should translate to added interior space for any EV using the Uniwheel. The big question: As potentially transformative as this may be, what does it do to the time-honored concept of reducing unsprung weight at each wheel?
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 