At CES 2025, technology company Donut Lab presenteed a new generation electric motor family that offers unprecedented performance, cost efficiency, and that eliminates the need for power transmission. Donut Lab is known for its modular technology platform, which provides EV manufacturers with a library of interoperable components. One of the main components of the Donut platform is a donut motor that can be placed directly into the tire and which has now been expanded into a motor family.

The motor family presented at CES includes five individual models that offer the best performance on the market in all vehicle categories.

A donut motor integrated directly with the tire now eliminates the need for power transmission entirely, making vehicles considerably lighter, more economical, and easier to manufacture. In addition, the second significant advantage of a donut motor is that is makes unsprung mass irrelevant.

The donut motor offers the best torque in the world, according to the company, making the motor exceptionally light compared to other technologies. The motor also breaks the traditional formula by which motors are optimized either in accordance with power or torque. In addition to the highest torque density, it has the highest power density in the world, which means that significantly more power and torque can be packed into the same weight and space than any other motor, the company said.

Great unsprung mass has been the most important reason why everyone hasn’t used motors integrated with the tire in their vehicles. Through the torque and power density we’ve now achieved, the relative weight of the motor is so small that for the first time the unsprung mass is insignificant. For these reasons, we’ve also invested a lot of time into patenting our inventions, because we believe that these motors will change the whole industry

—Marko Lehtimäki, CEO of Donut Lab

The 21-inch version weighing 40 kilograms can produce 630 kilowatts of power and 4,300N·m of torque—per motor. The motor is designed particularly for the motor vehicle industry, and its performance capability enables vehicles to break world records. A special version of this motor intended for trucks has been released simultaneously.

For two-wheelers, the company released a new 17-inch motorcycle motor that produces 150 kilowatts of power and 1,200 N·m of torque, with a total weight of only 21 kilograms. Conversely, the 12-inch version of the same motor is suitable for smaller two-wheelers and weighs only 8 kilograms. As the fifth motor, the company released a minidonut intended for drones, which is 120 millimeters in diameter, and produces 3 kilowatts and 20 N·m of performance, while weighing only 1,500 grams.

Donut motors also offer significant cost savings to vehicle manufacturers. When the same performance capacity is achieved with a smaller quantity of active materials, considerable reductions in costs are obtained. This way Donut Lab’s solutions reduce the price of vehicle manufacture compared to traditional technologies.

In addition to the motor, the important components of the modular Donut platform are battery modules, computer units and software that controls the vehicle. The company's vision is that in the future customers will be able to select the components they need from a catalog and link them together with standard connectors quickly and simply.