At CES 2025, Donut Lab revealed an expansion of its modular technology platform, transforming its main component, the donut in-wheel motor, into a family of five models that it says offer the best performance on the market in their respective vehicle categories. The Helsinki-based subsidiary of electric motorcycle manufacturer Verge Motorcycles now has a range that serves automotive, semi-truck, motorcycle, scooter, and drone applications.

“After a long wait, we finally get to present the next-generation version of the most important component of our technology platform,” said Marko Lehtimäki, CEO of Donut Lab. “Its performance capability is out of this world. Our donut motor has now also expanded into an entire motor family, which includes size options and performance classes for various uses.”

The company says its in-wheel motor concept solves challenges that have long slowed the development of EVs (electric vehicles). For example, traditional powertrain systems have made EVs expensive to manufacture and maintain, while reducing vehicle performance and increasing weight and complexity.

The donut motor integrated into a wheel eliminates the need for power transmission entirely, making vehicles considerably lighter, more economical, and easier to manufacture. Another significant advantage is that it makes “unsprung mass completely irrelevant.”

The motor is said to be exceptionally light compared to the competition. That enables the company to claim the highest torque and power densities in the world, which means that significantly more power and torque can be packed into the same weight and space than any other motor.

“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,” said Lehtimäki. “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. We’ve managed to bring something new to operators in the field that has previously not been possible—and this, in a nutshell, is Donut Lab’s mission.”

Among the five-model family is a 21-in version at 40 kg (88 lb) that can produce 630 kW and 4300 N·m (3170 lb·ft) that the company says “by any yardstick is the world’s best electric motor.” It is designed particularly for the auto industry with performance capability enabling “vehicles to break world records.” A version intended for trucks at the same mass produces 200 kW and 3000 N·m (2210 lb·ft).

For two-wheelers, the company released a 17-in motorcycle motor at 21 kg (46 lb) that produces 150 kW and 1200 N·m (885 lb·ft). A 12-in version of the same motor producing 15 kW and 300 N·m (220 lb·ft) at only 8 kg (18 lb) is suitable for smaller two-wheelers.

The fifth motor is a “mini-donut” intended for drones that is 120 mm in diameter, produces 3 kW and 20 N·m (15 lb·ft), and has a mass of only 1.5 kg (3.3 lb).

The company says the motors also offer significant cost savings to vehicle makers. One reason is that the same performance capacity of competing technology is achieved with a smaller quantity of active materials.

In addition, the company says that the assembly of vehicles has traditionally been a highly expensive and lengthy process. The main components are sourced from various suppliers, with most vehicle development going into integration work.

“Getting the different parts to function perfectly together and the software to communicate with each other is very time-consuming development work,” said Lehtimäki. “Our solution enables all parts to function without any trouble, accelerating the development effort and opening new opportunities in many fields of industry.”

In addition to the motor, the important components of the modular platform are battery modules, computer units, and control software. The company says that its customers will be able to select the components they need and link them with standard connectors quickly and simply.

At CES, Donut Lab also revealed more about the upcoming software layer of the platform aimed at speeding vehicle software development by 10-fold. The company is developing what it says is the world’s first no-code environment for vehicles, so future software logic for vehicles can be done with a graphical user interface instead of traditional programming-based code. This significantly reduces the number of errors, increases vehicle safety, and accelerates development work.

“With the help of an intelligent software layer, we can automatically integrate physical components, but in addition to this, we are now developing future software development solutions that will make vehicle development significantly more efficient and agile,” explained Lehtimäki. “At the core of all of this is advanced artificial intelligence, and in the future, the artificial intelligence features of the Donut platform will improve vehicle design, development, testing, and validation in unimaginable ways.”

The company’s vision for the platform is to create a dynamic ecosystem of technology partners to foster continuous innovation and enhance vehicle development methods. The platform’s scalability and integration of third-party technologies, both software and hardware, are designed to bring this vision to life.

A strategic collaboration with the Qt Group is a significant step toward that vision. At CES the Helsinki-based software company introduced its Qt Accelerate solution intended to automate and streamline the development of HMI (human-machine interface) user interfaces for EVs. The software will soon be integrated into the Donut platform to enhance its capabilities.

“With the help of Qt Accelerate, the development of HMI interfaces will become automated and significantly more efficient,” said Petteri Holländer, Senior Vice President of Ventures for Qt Group. “The technology to be integrated into the Donut platform will recognize the vehicle configuration and will be able to create an HMI that matches the vehicle’s actual features. This takes place completely automatically and therefore requires no manual work.”

“Our collaboration provides significant advantages to the development of vehicles, and it is also the first step in building a broader ecosystem for the Donut platform,” concluded Lehtimäki.