> The Chinese EV industry is actually lead by development of batteries
This is the core point, but it applies for the whole of the industry. Motors just don't matter. An electric motor is an almost vanishing component of the weight and complexity of an electric vehicle. Cut the mass of the thing *in half* and you're looking at 100kg savings, tops. You could do that with a Model Y by just changing the roof material to something boring and not glass. You could almost do it by shrinking the oversized-as-is-the-fashion wheels.
So... it's great that Mercedez-Benz is producing these, I guess. But it won't make their cars anything more than incrementally better. Which is why we're seeing them crow about it in a press release and not a spec sheet.
If they’re small, light, and cheap, you can put 4 of them on the car and get independent all-wheel drive and insane acceleration.
We have a dual-motor EV and our lease is expiring this year. We have our eyes on the GLC EV, which will land in the U.S. with a tri-motor design at first. There’s no fun in a single-motor EV.