How Electrified Motors helps OEMs go further with batteries

Electrified Automation – which now uses the brand Electrified Motors – set up a factory in the UK before it started selling its electric motors. (Photo: Electrified Automation)

To help customers overcome range anxiety in battery-electric equipment, it’s common that the first course of action is to install larger battery packs. Then, before the additional weight and cost endanger the entire project, the next step is to make the drivetrain itself more efficient. When faced with a new project Electrified Automation – which recently rolled out a new name and brand, Electrified Motors – prefers to start with the system architecture and then determine battery sizes.

“Having a bigger battery lets you go further, and that’s great,” said Jim Winchester, managing director, Electrified Automation Ltd., Bridgwater, England. “But if you can develop a system that demands less power, you can make any battery size go further. We focus on optimizing the system along with the customer and then after that work has been done, we’ll determine what battery size their equipment will need.”

As its new name implies, Electrified Motors is a supplier of electric motors that it has designed for a wide range of off-highway equipment. While the company was founded in 2020, its management and engineering teams have years of experience in automation as well as in the development, production and application engineering of electric motors. The company launched its own motor line two years ago after it ensured that its own factory was ready for large-scale production.

“When Electrified started, we focused on coming up with the equipment and processes that would enable innovative technology, such as permanent magnet motors, to be produced in high volumes,” said Winchester. “That led us into developing automated equipment and the necessary manufacturing software and processes. That early work helped us find better ways to meet the challenges we’ve seen throughout the industry over the years. Our goal was to overcome those challenges early so we could make innovative technology commercially available on a much bigger scale.”

We can build it...

Initially, the business plan was to help its customers become successful as electric motor suppliers, but the Electrified team soon saw there was a need for efficient, robust components within the off-highway equipment industry – and they already had the capabilities to become that supplier.

“In early 2023 we launched the electric motor side of the company, where we’re designing, manufacturing and selling our own range of low-voltage permanent magnet electric motors for off-highway,” said Winchester. “We felt like it was too good of a business case to not go after and we felt that we could supply a complete solution from start to finish.”

The company’s current product line of permanent magnet motors includes the 193 Series IPM motor, which in its most compact form weighs 11.4 kg and is available in 48 V, 80 V and 96 V versions. The 193 Series product line offers a compact and efficient motor solution capable of up to 15-kW rated power (with an S2 rating of 60 minutes).

“Coming up with the right mix of motors to launch the IPM line took a significant amount work as the off-highway market is rather fragmented,” said Winchester. “It’s not like in automotive, where you might see one supplier sell 100,000 pieces per year of one SKU to one customer. In off-highway, component suppliers have an order book made up of many different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that often have their own bespoke performance and mechanical interface requirements. For Electrified, our path to market was to look at machine architectures and vehicle types, and then we developed a range of motors aimed specifically at those parameters.”

Another difference between the automobile and off-highway equipment markets is that, together, the company’s OEM customers in off-highway build a wide range of equipment – from agricultural tractors to mini excavators to zero-turn mowers.

“In the world of off-highway equipment, if you take a mini excavator with its pump drive or an aerial work platform with its traction drive, for example, each one actually has similar electric motor requirements,” said Winchester. “The power requirements may be similar, and they likely both would prefer a compact motor with the utmost efficiency. Additionally, they’ll want something that’s really robust that can cope with the often more demanding off-highway environments, which is exactly what we’ve got in our IPM motors.”

The company’s current product line of permanent magnet motors includes the 193 Series IPM motors. (Photo: Electrified Automation)

Addressing a need

To address that need, Electrified Motors developed an automated manufacturing process for the core of the motor to ensure consistent and repeatable quality. Any custom work, such as installing a unique shaft or adapter plate, is performed at the end of the production line.

“That approach means we can serve each customer’s exact need without a huge disruption to our manufacturing process,” said Winchester. “Some off-highway companies may place an order for just 100 pieces a year, and with our manufacturing process and motor design philosophy, they benefit from a highly automated line but can still get an electric motor that is customized for their application. This ability is something we’ve been focused on from the very start of the company.”

To get its motors to the customer, Electrified uses three different channels to market. It has a global sales team in Europe and North America, so OEMs can work directly with Electrified Motors. It has also set up more than a dozen partner distributors and integrators around the world that offer packages that combine the Electrified IPM motor with inverters, pumps and other components based on the requirement of a particular application.

“Our third route to market is that we’re partnering with other leading Tier 1 suppliers that might, for example, make a transmission, controller or hydraulic pump. The flexible nature of our IPM motor allows them to make more integrated, cost-effective solutions for some higher volume applications,” said Winchester.

Finding a path

For those OEMs that need additional assistance, Electrified Motors can help them find a path toward electrification.

“We have customers that might deliver us a diesel machine and ask us to deliver it back to them converted to a full electric or hybrid architecture,” Winchester said. “While we don’t manufacture our own batteries or inverters, we have close partners for both, and we have a team here that understands those systems very well. We can take delivery of a piece of equipment, and we can size the battery, integrate it, do all of the electronics, and give that completed vehicle back to them ready for them to test and evaluate. Our team is always here for our customers to call upon.”

The company has considered its first two years of motor production a success by all measures and said it is predicting sales throughout 2025 to increase by a factor of six.

Jim Winchester. (Photo: Electrified Automation)

“We’ve been on quite a steep trajectory since the start of 2023,” said Winchester. “Because we heavily invested in automated manufacturing before we had orders, we were ready and capable to supply large OEMs the moment we launched the motor line. We’ve already had countless quality teams on site who want to audit our manufacturing processes, controls and traceability capabilities.

“To win a contract, the OEMs need to know you’re fully capable of maintaining repeatable quality and adhering to process controls once their volumes pick up. They don’t want to know what we might be able to do in the future. They want to know what we can do now.”

New factory in the works

2025 will be another transformative year for Electrified Motors in many respects. By this summer, the company expects to have moved into a new factory with more than 40,000 sq. ft. as well as a fully equipped research and development facility that is just down the road from its current location. Additionally, Electrified’s catalog of motors is expected to expand with the addition of a smaller 132 Series motor lineup, as well as a further expansion of the existing 193 Series motors to include liquid cooling and high-voltage variants.

This article originally appeared in the January-February 2025 issue of Power Progress.