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The dream of an all-electric world in which every bike, car, and truck silently cruises on roads of happiness and joy is in trouble. From really bad environmental and social issues to slow adoption and President Donald Trumps recent ban on subsidies, things look grim for EVs. The only thing that keeps going forward is innovation (well, mostly), as companies continue coming up with some really great ideas to fulfill the EV promise. One of them is a Finnish company that has designed something brilliant called the Donut. Donut Labs, which unveiled a family of in-wheel electric motors at CES 2025, has spent almost a decade searching for one of the holy grails of the EV industry: in-wheel motors that actually work. These motors aim to outperform current individual-wheel drive (IWD) systems, which are widely used in todays EVs, while also surpassing competing in-wheel motor technologies that are still in the prototype stage. Donut Labss curious designwhich looks like an empty metal cylinder with tapered edgescould mark a pivotal moment for EV propulsion systems, with huge implications for vehicle performance, cost, and design flexibility. [Photo: Donut Labs] Current electric vehicles predominantly rely on IWD systems, where each wheel is powered by its own independent motor. Unlike traditional internal combustion engine vehicles that use a central drivetrain, IWD systems employ inboard motors connected to wheels via half shafts. This design allows for features like torque vectoringadjusting torque at each wheel for better handlingand tank turning, where wheels on opposite sides rotate in reverse to pivot the vehicle on the spot. IWD systems are used in many vehicles, like the Rivian R1S and the Tesla Cybertruck. However, these systems still rely on mechanical components, like drive shafts and differentials, which add weight and complexity, wasting energy and increasing cost at manufacturing and over the lifetime of the car. [Photo: Donut Labs] The in-wheel motors like the ones that Donut Labs has created, also known as hub motors, aim to eliminate these components by integrating the motor directly into the wheel hub. There is no transmission. No extra pieces. The motor directly drives the wheel inside the wheel. By doing so, hub motors simplify vehicle architecture and reduce drivetrain losses. Yet adoption of hub motors has been slow due to technical challenges and concerns about unsprung massthe weight of components directly connected to the wheelsaffecting ride quality. There are also questions about long-term durability. These have limited their application in EVs, leaving most efforts in the prototype phase due to cost and poor performance. Until now. A sci-fi fantasy come true Donut Labs has been developing Donut motors for nearly seven years, starting with the idea of rethinking what propulsion systems and whole system architectures could look like in different kinds of vehicles if there was a high performance and low mass in-wheel motor available, CEO Marko Lehtimäki tells me in an interview. He says his team looked at all existing electric motor designs, analyzed their potential, and found that not a single motor in the world met the performance and feature set they wanted to achieve, especially when it came to reducing mass to a level suitable for in-wheel motor use. This inspired them to start from scratch and imagine a new type of motor, optimized for performance, weight, and cost. Lehtimäki says that the Donut Labs team went through several design generations and endless smaller iterations combining different winding techniques and magnet configurations before identifying the right ways to provide the highest performance while using common and inexpensive materials. Our Donut motor is a solution that no longer requires compromises, Lehtimäki tells me. Weve managed to bring something new to operators in the field that has previously not been possible. [Photo: Donut Labs] Now on the road The car motors introduced at CES are ready to go into production, but still not in any vehicle. Their in-wheel technology is already on the road, like Donut engines used on the Verge TS Pro bike, by Verge Motorcycles. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, Lehtimäki says. Many riders initially worry theyll miss the roar of a traditional engine, but after just a few minutes on our electric bike, they discover that the near-silent torque is every bit as thrilling, if not more, than engine noise. Its like a Tron Lightcycle fantasy, without the laser mayhem behind. The motors used in the Verge bike are just the first of a modular platform that includes battery modules, software, and control systems designed to work seamlessly together in the wheel, adaptable to every vehicle imaginable. The platform allows manufacturers to assemble vehicles faster and more efficiently by choosing from a catalog of interoperable components. Lehtimäki explains that traditional vehicle development involves extensive integration work with components sourced from various suppliers. Our solution enables all parts to function without any trouble, accelerating the development effort and opening new opportunities in many fields of industry, he says. And the architecture Donut Labs has designed allows the company to produce motors for all kinds of vehicles, from sports bikes to cars to buses to commercial trucks. Unheard power According to the companys numbers, its in-wheel motors stand out due to their performance metrics. The flagship 21-inch motor for cars delivers 4,300 newton meters (Nm) of torque and 630 kilowatts (kW) of power, while weighing just 88 pounds (not quite 40 kilograms). Pound by pound, those stats are unheard of in the current in-wheel motor prototypes and in the current EV and industrial combustion engine car industry. For comparison, Protean Electrics Pd18 in-wheel motor generates 1,250 Nm of torque and 80 kW of power, with a similar weight of 36 kilos. Ville Piippo, chief product officer at Donut Labs, says that it was very hard to design a motor with this level of performance using regular materials, which is key to keeping the cost low (the company hasnt disclosed the price of its engines). A lot of people think that one can only get these kinds of crazy performance specs by going exotic in material selection, but this is not the case, Piippo tells me. The Donut engines use standard magnets, steel laminations, and winding materials, but Piippo says by combining multiple big innovations and a whole lot of smaller ideas, we created in-wheel motors that have both the highest torque density and the highest power density of any electric motor in the world. The result is an electric motor with a peak efficiency of over 97%, again an unheard figure in the industry. The real beauty is in the way we can optimize the efficiency map to have high efficiency in the area of revolution per minute and load where it’s needed in a specific application, Piippo says. This means the motor can deliver maximum energy transfer, from the battery to motion, with minimal losses to match the load and speed requirements, translating to greater range and lower energy consumption. The key to all of this, Piippo says, is the Donut. The most significant innovation lies in our motors unique shape. By using a larger diameter with minimal active materials, were able to achieve higher torque and power density, essentially delivering more power and torque per kilogram than conventional motors. The unsprung mass problem Historically, unsprung mass has been a major obstacle for in-wheel motors. This is an important parameter in handling, or how a vehicle feels like to drive. All mass that is in direct contact with the road without going through suspension is unsprung mass: a wheels tires, in-wheel motors, brake rotor, control arms, steering arms, etc. Generally speaking, less unsprung mass is most often better than more unsprung mass, Piipo explains, but it is just one parameter among others, so one should not overstate its importance over other parameters. A more important metric is the ratio of unsprung mass to total vehicle mass, he says. Adding a lot of unsprung mass in a very lightweight vehicle can have negative effects, but adding a small amount of unsprung mass to an already heavy vehicle will have little to no effect. The relative weight of the Donut motor is so small that, for the first time, the unsprung mass is insignificant, Lehtimäki explains. At the same time, the company claims its in-wheel designs positive effects are impressive. These include precision in traction control, reduced system complexity, and improved overall vehicle performance. By integrating the motor directly into the wheel, Donut Labs says the need for components like drive shafts and gearboxes is eliminated, reducing weight and simplifying assembly, thus greatly reducing the cost of the overall car. Driving ahead In-wheel motors from other manufacturers have made strides but fall short of Donut Labss achievements. ProteanDrive, for example (which has Bentley behind it) integrates inverters within the wheel hub but lacks the torque and power density of Donut motors. The Elaphe L1500 targets SUVs and trucks but doesnt match Donuts performance metrics either. DeepDrives dual-rotor design promises material efficiency and range improvements but remains in the lab. In contrast, Donut motors are already in production. The companys motorcycle motors, used in the Verge TS Pro, deliver 150 kW of power and 1,200 Nm of torque at a weight of just 21 kilograms. Perhaps thats why, after the car motor introduction at CES, that the interest from the automotive industry has been extremely strong, according to Lehtimäki, who says, We are in serious discussions with hundreds of potential partners. (He doesnt reveal any names due to the nature of negotiations.) The companys design performance and the scalable motor lineup, which includes designs for trucks, two-wheelers, and drones, is key. But the biggest point may be the cost. Reducing manufacturing costs through the use of common materials and eliminating drivetrain components, the Donut Labs design allows for more affordable EV production. Lehtimäki says that this is the first electric motor that truly responds to the current requirements of electric vehicles and opens doors to completely new types of solutions. And in these times of EV crisis, these may be the definitive selling point of the technology.
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How can we all, as leaders, have a multiplier effect? How can we manage our impact on others so that we are multipliers who enable, encourage, and excite them to continuously raise the performance bar? What I mean by this is ensuring that everyone understands that to work here, you have two jobs: the job you were hired to do to continuously look for faster, better, cheaper ways of doing things. Lovely notion, but in many organizations, the weight of day-to-day activities stops them from doing this. They dont realize that its a false economy to see an irritatingly slow process and wait for someone else to do something about it because they just dont have the time. They dont see the dividend that would be paid next week if they stopped and fixed the problem today. You might be thinking that this is just la-la land. Theres no way we can get everyone to do this. But think of it this way: The opposite of continuously driving the performance bar upward is not stasis, its drifting backward. Your competitors will snack on your market share until theyve gorged themselves and left you starving. So how can this high-performance culture be realized? By creating a multiplier effect: meaning that employees not only do their job brilliantly well, but they enable everyone they come into contact with to do their job brilliantly well too. Not just their teammates. Not just their peers. Everyone. The other people in the meeting theyre in. The person from another department who needs some information. The junior employee whos learning how to do their job. The team whose project is going to heavily impact their department. Everyone. This diagram shows the alternatives to being a multiplier. None of them are performing. None of them are adequate. None of them are acceptable. [Illustration: Andrew Saffron] Bottom-left quadrant: Dead Loss These people hurt performance. They dont do their job properly and they get in the way of others doing their job properly. Bottom-right quadrant: Cheerleaders These people might seem great at first (particularly if theyve just replaced someone horrible), but it wont take long before their people realize that because their task skills arent up to scratch, they cant set direction, cant challenge them, cant answer their questions. So, their impact might initially be positive, but it will drift through neutral and end up being negative. Top-left quadrant: Brilliant Jerk This is the tricky one. You could argue that because of their great technical skills, theyre actually adding something to the organization. Yes, they might add something at first. But I believein fact, I knowthat this is a short-term thing. It doesnt take long for the impact of these peoples poor behavior to start impacting other peoples ability to do their jobs. Top-right quadrant: Multipliers Once again, people operating in this quadrant are having a multiplier effect because they do their job brilliantly well AND they enable everyone they work with to do their job brilliantly well. So, how do you ensure that you are a multiplier? There are three key behaviors: Empowerment Its a much overused and abused term, but I define empowerment as “devolving decision-making authority to the place of greatest information. That is, letting the people who know most about something get on with it. What, without checking their work? Yes. What, without weighing in with my huge intellect and exceptional experience? Yes. A lack of empowerment is a productivity issue (decisions getting escalated into a bottleneck), its a quality issue (decisions being made by those with less knowledge than the person who escalated), and its a customer service issue (as a result of suboptimal productivity and quality). And if youre thinking I cant possibly let that person make the decision. They wont do as good a job of it as I would, thats your faulteither because you havent given them the skills to be able to do it well, or youve tried to give them the skills, they havent learned, and youve done nothing about it. Helpfulness I truly believe that helpfulness is a key distinguishing feature of high-performing organizations. Everyone is enabled and encouraged to think about how they can be of greatest service to others in the organization. Some think of helpfulness as a bit anemic, a bit cutesy. Theyre wrong. Imagine if everyone in your organization were doing their best to help everyone else in the organization get the best result. Focus Empowerment and helpfulness are useless unless youre very clear about what needs to get done when it needs to get done, the resources required to deliver, and that people are held to account for delivery. Sounds like Management 101? Perhaps. But how often in your organization do people find themselves facing conflicting priorities, too many priorities, or changing priorities? A relentless drive to ensure that youre clear about focus areas and that everyone else is 100% clear on them takes a lot of pressure out of the system. Being a multiplier requires a big slab of self-awareness and the humility to know what you need to change. Start with yourself and then insist on this as a requisite to work on your team. Illustration from Better Culture, Faster by Andrew Saffron, published by Practical Inspiration Publishing.
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Some of the biggest music stories in 2024 revealed inalienable truths. Kendrick beat Drake, once and for all; on the heels of her Eras Tour, the highest-grossing tour in history, Taylor Swift is the biggest Pop star in the world; and people like their Pop music served country-fried, as evidenced by Shaboozeys massive A Bar Song and Post Malones Nashville-forward album F-1 Trillion. But that’s the tip of the iceberg of what streaming and record sales data can reveal about where the industry is headed. Luckily, Luminatethe analytics firm whose data powers the Billboard chartsis the keeper of the keys on everything from streaming numbers and live music attendance to ascendant genres and the listening patterns of emerging markets. The media-data company had a lot of numbers to work within 2024, global streams reached nearly 5 trillion. Here are five key takeaways from Luminates year-end music report that forecast where music is going in 2025. 1. The pop girlies are just getting started When it came to hot genres, by mid 2024, the year was looking a lot like 2023with Latin music seeing the strongest listener growth in the U.S. But a lot can change in six months. Led by solo female performers, pop music triumphed. With Taylor Swift (12.8 billion streams) and Billie Eilish (4.5 billion streams) leading the pack, women solo acts occupied seven pop’s 10 most-streamed artists in the U.S. There were 47 female pop artists in the genres top 100 artistsincluding Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roanyet they drove nearly two out of every three songs streamed. Pop may have experienced the steepest rise, but as far as genre popularity goes, R&B and hip-hop still hold court. Just about one in every four audio streams last year was R&B/hip-hop, said Jaime Marconette, Luminates VP of music insights and industry relations, on a recent webinar. Still, the battle for genre primacy rages on, with country seeing significant upticks in 2024 thanks to international markets. Since last year, Marconette continued, R&B and hip-hops overall piece of the streaming pie is actually down 2.3 percentage points. 2. Gen Z will shell out for a concert If streaming allows artists to build a fanbase, then that fandom manifests at live performances. This past year, Gen Z unseated millennials for the first time as the biggest live music spenders, with the younger cohort specifically driven by music festivals more than any other demographic. In the second quartertypically when festival tickets go on sale ahead of the summer seasonGen Z spent an average of $38 per month on live events, which is 23% higher than the average listener. Although millennials have been dethroned, they continue to spend more on individual concerts than the festival-prone Gen Zers. Despite Gen Zs predilection towards festivals, Luminates data indicates that across all music listeners, the increasing price of live events is the largest barrier to entry, with 68% of live music goers citing ticket cost as something keeping them from attending concertsthe highest percentage in the history of Luminates audience reporting. According to the U.S. News & World Report, music festivals in 2024 cost between $200 and $600 on average, not counting additional expenses for travel, food, and lodging. Meanwhile, Pollster reports that last years 100 top music tours averaged $122.84. 3. TV, short-form, and video games fuel music discovery What people watch has long influenced what they listen to, but Luminates Streaming Viewership model is able to track the minutes watched of the years most popular music documentaries and offer insight into how viewership leads directly to streams. The eponymous Beach Boys documentary, for example, resulted in the legacy act seeing two bumps in streaming: one when the documentary was announced and another at the time of its release. People watch the documentary and then they go listen to the music, Marconette said. TV is particularly influential for millennials, who are 30% more likely than the average listener to discover music through streamers exclusive TV shows. Among other forms of content like short-form video, livestreams, and gaming, the endless permutations of genre and platform are ripe for different types of music discovery. In the U.S., fans of J-Pop are 73% more likely than average to discover music on platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok, whereas Afropop fans are 188% more likely to make their own discoveries on Twitch than the average listener. Video games, meanwhile, lead fans to more hip-hop and rap, with those genre’s listeners 87% more likely to find music through games than the average listener. 4. International listeners are boosting streamers’ bottom lines In 2024, the global music industry hit 4.8 trillion streamsa single-year record and a year-on-year increase of 14%. Perhaps more remarkably, that jump represents a 75% increase in on-demand audio streams since 2022. But streaming isn’t just a volume gamestrong results and, streamers say, higher royalties, are driven by ad-free, subscription-based streaming. International markets are showing growth, but the markets that stream the most aren’t necessarily adopting premium plans proportional to their listening. Brazil, for example ranks No. 4 in total streaming, but 34th in premium growth. Latin America has led overall international premium growth since 2021, but in 2024 Asia, followed by Eastern Europe led international premium growth. At the top of the pack was Turkey, which saw a 17.8% jump in premium streams, followed by Croatia (16.1%, Romania, Malaysia, South Korea, and Slovakia). 5. Global music drives cultural exchangewith some limitations Growth in international streaming has given Luminate a trove of data that can help quantify the ways in which globalized music drives cultural exchange. This year, the debuted its Export Power Score, which ranks countries’ ability to export music globally based on factors that include artist streaming rank, a country’s market share, and the total number of countries listening to international artists. “You can use these metrics to really start evaluating the cultural impact that happens through music from a country, but you can also analyze some different trade relationships,” Marconette said. For several countries,language is a determining factor, with their top importers of content often sharing the same language. But in English-speaking markets, English-language artists are losing streaming share to non-English acts. In the U.S., artists from Mexico and Chile are making gains, while Indian artists showed streaming increases in the U.K. and Australia. Additionally, country made gains in English-speaking international markets in 2024, and Latin music found popularity in Portugal. In one area of cultural exchange, all roads lead back to one American artist in particular. Swedish songwriters Max Martin and Shellback were two of 2024’s most-streamed songwriters, but not because they were behind a breakout artist from last year like Chappell Roan’s songwriting collaborator Dan Nigro (No. 4). But both contributed heavily to 1989, which Taylor Swift re-released at the end of 2023, helping make them some of last year’s hottest songwriterswith Swift leading the pack.
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