What are Hub Motors?
A hub motor is an electric motor that turns a wheel without the use of a transmission. This is accomplished because a hub motor is built directly into the wheel’s hub, which is the point around which the wheel rotates. Because this bypasses the need for a transmission, hub motors are more efficient, especially at high rates of speed. It is common to find a hub motor on an electric bicycle. Hub motors, as an idea, have been around for more than a century. They were originally conceived for use with automobiles, but today are used almost exclusively on electric bicycles. Motorized bicycles are a common sight in Asia, much more so than in the U.S., but technological advances are making them more popular in general. Some motorized bicycles are manufactured that way, but it can sometimes be cheaper to install a hub motor on a bike as an aftermarket add-on. There are many conversion kits available, including kits for modifying a Chinese hub motor to fit a bicycle of American dimensions. Moto
If you’ve read our main article on electric motors, you’ll know the basic idea of turning stored electricity into motive power: feed an electric current through tightly coiled wire that sits between the poles of a magnet and the coil spins around making a force that can turn a wheel and drive a machine. Most electric-powered vehicles (electric cars, electric bicycles, and wheelchairs) use onboard batteries and a single, fairly ordinary electric motor to power either two or four wheels. But some of the latest electric cars and electric bicycles work a different way. Instead of having one motor powering all the wheels using gears or chains, they build a motor directly into the hub of each wheel—so the motors and wheels are one and the same thing. That’s what we mean by a hub motor. Photo: The hub motor of an electric bike. Note the thick copper coils of wire that convert electric power from the battery into the movement that pushes you along. Picture by courtesy of Fabian Rodriguez, publ
