IN-WHEEL-MOTOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES AND THEIR ASSOCIATED DRIVETRAINS Mahmoud Said Jneid 1 , Péter Harth 2 , Péter Ficzere 31 1,2 Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Automotive Technologies, Hungary 3 Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Vehicle Elements and Vehicle- Structure Analysis, Hungary Received 8 June 2020; accepted 7 July 2020 Abstract: The increasing concerns of reducing CO2 emissions and eliminating the operational expense of the vehicle have motivated several automotive manufacturers to pave the road for the Electric Vehicle (EV). Nowadays, EVs are becoming more commonplace in the transportation sector. However, EVs and their related technologies are being under development process which forms the magnificent research area for most vehicle manufacturers as well as researchers concerned in this field. Most automotive manufacturers have set a plan as the present trend suggests, the EVs are likely to replace the internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles shortly. Therefore, the vehicle sector has recently witnessed a critical shift towards the vehicle electrification. Since the beginning of the EV development, the vehicle basic structure has gone through different developing steps as compared to the basic traditional layout. Today, most companies involved in the field of automotive manufacturing, are seeking to develop an EV that takes into account effectiveness, low cost and size as a design criterion. The most remarkable change in vehicle structure during the electrification process was the drivetrain system. Thanks to the recent innovative technologies used in the automotive industry, several companies have succeeded in introducing a unique solution for the most challenging aspects in EV development. Pioneer, automotive manufacturers such as “Protean”, have recently developed the so-called In-Wheel-Motor. In-Wheel-Motor is an innovative compact drivetrain system perfectly fits the EVs requirements. Since the introduction of the IWM, the drivetrain is subjected to a crucial modification as compared to the traditional drivetrain in HEVs and EVs with On-Board-Motor (OBM). In this paper, the most state of the art EVs and their associated drivetrains are reviewed, discussed and compared. Keywords: electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, vehicle electrification, drivetrain, in- wheel-motor, on-board-motor, central motor, a wheel corner module, x-by-wire, drive-by-wire, accelerate-by-wire, brake-by-wire, steer-by-wire, additive manufacturing. 3 Corresponding author: ficzere@kge.bme.hu UDC: 629.326.2 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7708/ijtte.2020.10(4).01 1. Introduction The increasing concerns about the environment and the climate changes have led that many researchers in the field of automotive developed the EVs and Hybrid EVs (HEVs) and their related systems for encouraging the use of these vehicles. The development process of EVs is now at the crossroads, where most of the companies concerned in the field of EVs are currently modifying the structure of the EV and its design in order to reach the goal of obtaining a vehicle with high efficiency and low or even zero-emission. For this purpose, automotive manufacturers are developing new propulsion 415 International Journal for Traffic and Transport Engineering, 2020, 10(4): 415 - 431