UK-based electric vehicle technology start-up Helix says it has distilled its unique capability into a package, it terms Scalable Core Technology (SCT) that is available as three Product Levels – Stock, Configured and Custom – providing a clear pathway to production while matching powertrain requirements with the optimal level of customisation.
Adapted from already-engineered solutions built, tested and delivered, configured products closely match more exacting customer requirements, while the Custom level delivers a product designed and developed to meet the most exacting specification through tailored SCT.
Through Helix’s X-Division, the start-up will utilise its founder’s over 25-years of experience to meet the demanding requirements of clients. For instance, Helix says recently it proved with a hypercar motor project known internally as REB, which is an electric motor weighing only 28kg but is capable of delivering 650kW of continuous power. This X-Division SPX177 product it claims is the most powerful pure battery electric vehicle (BEV) motor the company has ever produced.
Derek Jordanou-Bailey, Chief Engineer at Helix, took overall responsibility for the project. He comes has 7 years of experience at Integral Powertrain (IP), from which Helix evolved in 2022, before a stint at Mercedes-AMG HPP (High Performance Powertrains) working on F1 power units. He returned to IP, now Helix, in 2018.
“It uses the ‘top end’ in materials and reaches back into our motorsport heritage. Our SCT is intended to deliver products that are tailored to customer requirements and easily manufactured in large production runs, but for REB the focus was on ultimate performance, accepting that the machine would be more demanding to manufacture in anything more than smaller batches.
In those terms, it is like an F1 or Formula E unit. It’s small and weighs just 41kg, including the 13kg inverter. It is a 2×3-phase motor, so its current is shared across two inverters, a necessary approach to meet the phase current demands at ‘normal’ DC voltages at this extremely high-power level. Both the motor and inverter have extremely high-power density. Six high-voltage cables connect the inverter to the motor, while an LV connector carries the various control signals,” he says.
High performance at a fraction of size
Helix developed the SPX177 product for an unidentified hypercar manufacturer and Jordanou-Bailey confirms a single motor delivering 650kW continuous will be installed in the vehicle. He notes that the motor delivered over 700kW peak on the test stand and ‘…it could potentially deliver more, we didn’t push it’.
The company says even compared to the latest, highly boosted internal combustion engines (the McLaren Artura, for example), the product weighs less than 1/7th for equivalent continuous power output, although Jordanou-Bailey concedes that the battery weighs a lot more than the IC engine’s fuel store. The battery pack is therefore the major item around which an electric hypercar is packaged, but low mass of this SPX177 product enables options in terms of where the motor is installed, helping optimise the car’s architecture for a low centre of gravity and cleaner aerodynamics, for example.
Considering the REB project team, Jordanou-Bailey says the original concept came from Luke Barker, one of four Helix directors. A team of no more than 12 engineers, including Jordanou-Bailey himself – although he asserts that he did ‘none of the heavy lifting’ – then completed the work, including the build, in little more than two years.
A proposal for an initial small ‘production’ batch is underway and, meanwhile, Helix is supporting the customer’s integration of the power unit into the vehicle. “Then there’ll be liaison with their software team, but since the motor and inverter are already paired, we expect it to largely be plug and play,” Jordanou-Bailey concludes.
