19 for the art of the possible.” That then feeds down into the core technology across marine, off-highway, defence and aerospace – creating motors that are smaller and more powerful than ones that have gone before. As a result, Edwards and his colleagues are aiming to bring motor development to the fore, in an industry which all too often simply focuses on new battery technologies as the only real source of advancement opportunity. “If you look at it from an efficiency perspective, it’s all about size and mass,” he concludes. “If you’re using space for motors, you can’t use it for battery or payload – and that goes for every sector. Wherever size and weight are constrained, we can provide a better solution. “That plays particularly to marine projects, which are a bit unusual. In cars, you have a lot of power-to-weight and when people put their foot down, they want to accelerate. In marine, you have a relatively gentle acceleration because there is a massive drag due to the viscosity of the water. So, where in a road car you might put your foot to the floor for 10 seconds but then lift off to maybe 10% throttle, in marine, you go to full throttle and you could be sat there continuously for hours. “That is a completely different drive cycle and it mandates a slightly different configuration, so there is a lot of optimisation opportunity in that area. We’ve worked on E1 Racing and Magic Carpet E, which is a wonderful carbon fibre sail racing vessel that we fully electrified to eliminate the use of a generator while they’re under sail racing. We’re supplying to outboard manufacturers, stern drive manufacturers, catamarans and at least three defence applications for marine operations. “It’s the same for a number of the other applications where they have a conventional system and they either want to improve performance or have quieter operation. That really lends itself to electrification, but often there’s not enough space to put the extra kit in. So, we provide those solutions to customers who need that functionality – and that’s critically important at the moment. “We’ve done quite a few proto-parts for mining vehicles, for example, where electrification brings some indirect benefits that you often don’t think of – like cutting down the energy they usually need to drive air through the mine and taking away volatile fuels that can cause explosive atmospheres. Meanwhile, in construction, many of the vehicles need good sight lines and anything that gets in the way of a driver seeing what’s around their wheels and bucket is a really bad thing for the operator – so as engines get bigger, with more and more after treatment, we can provide benefit to them by putting in a really small motor. “Then there’s aerospace, where we are seeing a lot of interest in space launch vehicles because they’re very mass constrained. That is very much about efficiency and dropping mass because that’s your payload. They can literally put a price-per-kilo on the satellites, so they’re very clear-sighted about that because they’re charged by the kilo. We are also working with jet-engine manufacturers to look at improving the efficiency of gas turbines by having electric support in some areas of their operations, so they’re not constrained in one area when most of the cruising is done in another area. Again, it’s all about minimising mass for those applications and that plays really well to our core strengths.” It is clear, then, that there is plenty of scope for electric motor development in all industries – however, recent changes in magnet licensing in China are threatening to put pressure on that development. To Edwards, though, this presents an opportunity to revisit assumptions around motor design. “It will change structures to some extent, so the future is going to be about making the best of low or zero magnet content and different magnet materials,” he concludes. “That will probably be the next impact on motors. “A lot of automotive manufacturers don’t use magnets at all, but that tends to lead to a bigger motor and they can handle that because the cost is reduced and they have space. High-performance vehicles and the other industries I mentioned don’t have that luxury. So, I believe it will certainly impact those premium motors, but in terms of how we get around that, we will ultimately achieve the same efficiency and improve power in different ways – I have no doubt about that!” E-Mobility Engineering | July/August 2026 Helix is now electrifying everything from defence vehicles to sailing vessels
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