The British drive specialist Horse Powertrain has introduced a new engine that uses components made of amorphous steel. The technology significantly reduces magnetic losses and achieves an efficiency of up to 98.2 percent. Such an engine could make hybrid and electric drives more efficient and compact in the future.
Electric motors are already considered particularly efficient today. Because many series vehicles have models installed that achieve an efficiency of between 90 and 95 percent.
For comparison: the world record for the efficiency of a diesel engine is 53 percent. The engine was able to outperform the competition by almost 25 percent.
In comparison, electric motors use the energy used with significantly higher efficiency. However, some of the energy is still lost through electrical resistance, friction and so-called iron losses in the engine.
New material concepts, such as the use of amorphous steel, are intended to further reduce precisely these losses. With such a development, the British manufacturer Horse Powertrain has now made an industry-leading efficiency of 98.2 percent possible.
Amorphous steel enables record engine efficiency
The British manufacturer had already presented its Amorphous Motor at the IAA Summit in 2025. A steel alloy with extremely high durability, strength and magnetic permeability was used in the production.
Horse Powertrain itself describes its development as a high-efficiency hybrid geared motor. This has a stator block made of an amorphous steel alloy.
This is a special metal alloy in which the atoms are not arranged neatly in rows. Instead, they have a rather disordered structure, similar to glass.
This effect occurs during production due to the extremely rapid cooling of the liquid metal. The resulting structure gives the amorphous steel special properties.
For example, so-called magnetic losses are reduced. This in turn can help reduce energy losses in electric motors, for example.
At its peak, the engine has an output of 140 kilowatts and 360 Newton meters. The efficiency is an “industry-leading efficiency of 98.2 percent,” as the manufacturer writes.
Amorphous steel alloy reduces engine losses
The motor can achieve this extremely high level of efficiency because the layers of amorphous steel alloy in the stator are particularly thin at 0.025 millimeters. It is a tenth of the thickness of steel in conventional engines.
This allowed Horse Powertrain to reduce the engine’s iron losses by 50 percent compared to similar designs. In a hybrid vehicle, the use of the amorphous engine would allow for a one percent reduction in fuel and power consumption.
“The Amorphous Motor is ideally suited to power a new generation of highly efficient, range-extended electric vehicles, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles,” explains Ingo Scholten, deputy head of technology at Horse Powertrain. Such developments could ensure “that these technologies continue to play an important role in the decarbonization of the automotive industry.”
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