A New World of EV Performance? Testing the Elaphe Hub-Motor Prototype on Ice in a Hyundai Ioniq 5

A 500-horsepower, front-engined, rear-drive American pony car on ice without tire studs sounds like a real handful, a delicate dance requiring saintly levels of self-restraint and finesse. I’m a patient guy, but on a frozen Swedish lake in early March in the seat of just such a car, I’m not having to be nearly so careful. My right foot is flat to the floor, I’m drifting effortlessly around a massive skidpad, and I’m having a grand old time.

That’s because I’m getting more than a little help from the front axle and some advanced stability control on this machine. Up front, where normally only big brakes, suspension, and steering arms lie, this coupe has something extra: a pair of motors. Bolted on over those brakes and just fitting inside the wheels, the motors add power, yes, but more important, they add an incredible amount of capability to a car that, otherwise, would be better left stabled in these conditions.

Straight From Slovenia

The motors come from a small Slovenian company called Elaphe. Though in operation since 2006, it has operated rather quietly, working on black-ops projects like this with various manufacturers and preaching the virtues of in-wheel hub motors on larger, grander scales than the scooters and e-bikes where they’re typically found.

Elaphe’s greatest claim to fame is the partnership with Lordstown that looked poised to finally bring the company’s motors to the masses. However, that dream failed with Lordstown’s bankruptcy, and now Elaphe is here to show what it can do on vehicles of various other sorts.

See All 30 Photos30

Vehicles like a modified Hyundai Ioniq 5. In N form, the Ioniq 5 is quite a hoot. But, in its base, non-evolved form, it’s much humbler. That’s especially true on ice. I had a chance to start out with a base Ioniq 5 on a plowed handling circuit at the Colmis Proving Ground just outside of Arjeplog, Sweden.

The car is extremely competent in its default mode. Ask too much from its set of unstudded snow tires, and the stability and traction control systems are quick and abrupt in cutting power. Trying to accelerate out of a corner means trying to keep the steering and throttle within a very narrow window of functionality. Anywhere outside of that, and you’re going nowhere.

Interestingly, though, it is possible to disable those systems with just a long press of the traction control button. With TC off, the stock Hyundai is a very different beast. Now it’s possible to slide and to spin up the tires in a much more enjoyable way, but it’s still far from rewarding. The Ioniq 5 is extremely difficult to drift smoothly, kicking into wild oversteer with little warning. Then, if you try to power your way out of corners, it has a tendency to fall into terminal understeer. Even with an extremely aggressive Scandinavian flick, it simply plowed straight ahead as soon as I got on the throttle.

See All 30 Photos30

Enter the Quad-Motor Ioniq

Elaphe’s version of the same car, however, was a completely different experience. To make it, the company binned Hyundai’s dual motors and installed four in-wheel hub motors, each capable of generating 188 horsepower and 1,254 lb-ft of torque. Elaphe integrated them with the car’s stock battery and power system, such that the Ioniq 5 even reports the remaining state of charge on the touchscreen.

You get in, start up the car, and twist the drive selector forward for D just like in a standard Ioniq. Everything from there, though, is radically different.

In the default mode, the car is again safe and easy to drive on the slick surface. However, where Hyundai’s safety systems cut power abruptly when they detect slip and are then reluctant to give it back, the Elaphe car is far more subtle in this regard. Turn the wheel into a corner, and the Ioniq gently decreases power so smoothly that I could just keep my foot flat on the accelerator and drive around the course.

The car also increases the recuperative braking on the inside wheels to help the chassis turn, but never so much that it slips into oversteer. There’s just enough understeer to scare a novice driver from pushing too hard.

See All 30 Photos30

From there, you can step up to Sport and Sport Plus modes, with increasing control and power along the way. In Sport Plus, the car is now happy to engage in moderate drifts, while the throttle is significantly livelier. But hang out the tail by more than a few degrees, and the car brings it back in line, again relying on the individual regenerative braking power of the four wheels to do so smoothly and without the clatter of ABS firing away.

There is, though, another mode beyond that, a true drift mode. Here, the system is still there to provide some help, but by and large, it let me do whatever I wanted. The formerly humble Ioniq 5 turned into an absolute joy on the ice. I could hang the tail way out through tighter corners or power it sideways through faster ones.

The car acted in a clean, predictable way, with no abrupt power cuts or clumsy interventions. When I fell a little behind in my drifting, there was just a little help to keep the tail from coming around completely, but otherwise I was free to pivot and swing the 4,600-pound EV as I wanted.

See All 30 Photos30

Weight Implications

Elaphe representatives told me that, despite the extra motors, its version of the car weighs just a few pounds more than the standard one. The stock brakes are retained, but the suspension is replaced by bespoke KW units, calibrated to handle the extra weight in the wheels.

Yes, there is additional unsprung mass here, with each motor weighing something on the order of 60 pounds. That must necessarily ruin a car’s handling, right? “The top test drivers in the top performance OEMs would disagree,” Elaphe CEO Gorazd Gotovac said. “From my perspective, that’s enough for me.”

Gotovac admitted that, for premium luxury machines, the extra weight in the wheels would potentially cause complications in ride quality, but nothing that can’t be addressed with more advanced suspension damping. He claimed the idea of in-wheel motors reducing handling performance is a myth. “High-mu, low-mu, on tarmac and on ice, we prove that every day to OEMs,” he said.

See All 30 Photos30

That, unfortunately, is one area of evaluation we cannot comment on. While your average frozen lake is bumpy and rough, the test courses we sampled in Sweden were groomed to be ultra-smooth.

That extra mass hanging out in the wheels must surely have some negative implications, but Gotovac said they’re far outweighed by potential positives. By moving the motors out to the wheels, you free up room within the chassis, meaning space for bigger batteries, more cargo area, or just overall better packaging. Even this Ioniq 5, which typically has just a tiny frunk, instead had a massive empty space under its hood.

See All 30 Photos30

But by designing a car from the ground up to use these motors, Elaphe says cars can be lighter, too, by switching to smaller brakes and doing away with reduction gearsets and differentials, which also sap power. Designed in this way, Elaphe estimates cars could also be upward of 10 percent cheaper to manufacture when you factor in the smaller batteries required for lighter-weight, more efficient cars.

And what about servicing the brakes trapped behind those motors? Once you take off the wheel, there are three exposed bolt heads. Loosen those, replace them with pins to hold the motor’s rotor and stator in place, then unplug the motor and lift it off. Easy.

That’s not something you should need to do too often, thanks to the motors doing much of the braking. Still, Elaphe designed its hub motors to fit over even big sports brakes, up to nearly 14.8 inches in diameter—and stepping up to 15.7 inches for the company’s hypercar-spec motors.

See All 30 Photos30

AWD American Muscle

Elaphe’s prototype pony car (it asked us not to identify the specific model) clearly wasn’t designed for this, so Elaphe’s engineers had to eject the rear seat and replace it with a 9.0-kWh, 200-kW battery plus inverter and all the requisite orange cabling. While each motor can generate 148 hp, the 200-kW battery output means a maximum of 268 hp across the front axle, combined with the 500 hp at the rear wheels from the 5.0-liter V-8.

Yes, that theoretically makes it faster in a straight line, but the bigger improvement is in the low-grip handling. With Elaphe’s system disabled, I tried to accelerate forward on a polished patch of ice out on the lake. The car struggled and spun its rear wheels and, despite making a lot of noise, just barely inched forward. Once I got a bit of momentum, I tried to make a few quick turns with no success. The car initially refused to turn, and then, when I added a little power, it quickly spun.

See All 30 Photos30

After a system reboot and a mesmerizing series of button presses to enable Elaphe’s front motors, I tried the same thing again. The car didn’t exactly launch forward on the same slick ice, but it accelerated away cleanly, and when I cranked the wheel to one side and the other, the car in fact turned as I commanded.

I was able to work through the various drive modes on the handling circuit, as well. Again, the car started safe and easy and gradually got wilder, until at the end, in Drift mode, I was able to cleanly and easily slide it around exactly as I wanted. It was not only far more capable but far more fun, all thanks to a little extra power and individual-wheel recuperative braking at the front axle.

I even got to sample the same technology in a Fiat Ducato truck that had a pair of Elaphe motors customized for heavy-duty applications in partnership with Neapco, known for its high-end driveline components. These beefier units have an integrated two-speed planetary gearset but operate in much the same way, again making that big van much easier to drive on the ice.

See All 30 Photos30

It was all a hugely impressive demonstration, but these cars are clearly one-off prototypes. When might we see this technology in the real world?

Gotovac said we can expect “a couple of vehicles” before 2030, with more coming after that. The later vehicles will be developed fully around the motors, enabling better interior packaging, better aerodynamics, and lower cost. He declined to identify the OEMs involved but said they’re household names.

We’ll have to wait and see, but if the company’s tech can make an American muscle icon a joy on the ice without studs, it certainly has our attention.

OPEN GALLERY