16 July/August 2026 | E-Mobility Engineering Helix’s chief engineer Jim Edwards is using motorsport technology to reduce the size and weight needed for electrification. Will Gray explores further Changing the scales for motors In the world of electrification, battery technology is often cited as the area with greatest opportunity for development. Improvements over recent decades have been clear to see, with EV ranges increasing year on year – but Jim Edwards believes that motor technology has an equally important part to play, particularly in high-performance and heavy-duty sectors. Now, after a career that has slowly grown into electrification, some of his biggest achievements could be just around the corner. Electrification was far from mainstream when Edwards began his career, but he had an environmental focus from the off. In 1994, when he took on his first job at Ford, he analysed drive cycles to minimise real-world emissions for the Escort and Mondeo turbo-diesel engines. Then, when he moved to Milbrook Proving Ground, he worked on optimising a 20-strong range of bi-fuel LPG and CNG vehicles for Vauxhall, before helping to develop the first hybrid bus for London (UK), taking his first steps into the EV space. That project began in 2003, when the city’s focus changed from reducing NOx emissions to reducing CO2 emissions. The client had originally developed a gas turbine bus – which was excellent at achieving the former, but not so good on the latter. So, in response to the change in priority, they came to Edwards and his colleagues with a ready-made design for a rangeextended battery EV and tasked them with optimising its operation. “I was involved in calibrating the hybrid system, looking at the bus architecture and drive cycle, and identifying where we could refine its operation to get the best of it in a real-world application,” he explains. “We set up a model of the London Transport bus cycle and, using the vehicle inertia and drag, we were able to predict the power requirements of the motor and look at how best to operate the engine and battery system – regenerating energy, not fully charging packs so you could regen down the hills, and making sure the engine switched off as often as possible to minimise idle emissions. It was a ‘first-of-a-kind’ system and we got 30% below the baseline CO2 emissions for an equivalent bus per passenger.” Developing hydrogen Edwards’ next project at Millbrook was another bus, but this time with hydrogen fuel cells. His work involved installing hydrogen fuelling infrastructure and running the bus in the Variable Temperature Emissions Chamber (VTEC). Edwards recalls: “The chamber had a rolling road and a big recirculating air system, and it could fit up to three double-decker buses and run them from minus 40 to plus 50 degrees. The bus had several 3 m long hydrogen tanks on the roof, and we knew that if one of the pressure relief vales was to vent in an enclosed space, such as the VTEC, then that could be very serious. So, we set up a lot of hydrogen sensors and made sure everything was vented to the extraction system. The chances were tiny, but you can’t accept that risk.” That hydrogen experience drew Edwards to Intelligent Energy, which at the time was involved in a wide range of developments in the fuel cell space, from putting air-cooled fuel cell stacks Jim Edwards now heads up technical development at motor manufacturer Helix (All images: Helix)
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