Characteristic of PMASynRM with ferrite magnets for EV/HEV applications

Although motors that use rare-earth permanent magnets typically exhibit high performance, high costs and concerns about the stability of raw material supplies can cause decreased production. This paper proposes a permanent magnet assisted synchronous reluctance motor (PMASynRM) with a ferrite magnet that does not use rare earth materials. The performance of the proposed PMASynRM is evaluated based on the 2-D finite element method and an experiment using a prototype machine. The analysis results reveal that the proposed PMASynRM has the same power density and equivalent efficiency as conventional rare-earth permanent magnet synchronous motors for HEV driving. As a result, the proposed structure is found to achieve high-power and high-efficiency performance.