Williams Grand Prix : Advanced Engineering Supports YASA Facility Opening

Williams Advanced Engineering today supported YASA's Oxford facility launch event, which was opened by Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Rt Hon Greg Clark MP.

YASA is the world's leading manufacturer of axial-flux electric motors and controllers and its new 100,000-unit capacity production facility will help meet the growing demand for its products. YASA's innovative axial-flux electric motor design offers best-in-class power and torque densities and is ideally suited to both hybrid and pure electric vehicle applications. With YASA's technology, automotive manufacturers have greater design flexibility to improve vehicle performance whilst reducing vehicle weight.

Williams Advanced Engineering has used YASA electric motors in a variety of specialist projects with major OEM's. These have included the fully electric Nissan Bladeglider, the Jaguar C-X75 hybrid hypercar and the Aston Martin RapidE; all of which were on display at the facility's opening event.

More recently, Williams Advanced Engineering's in-house team developed the FW-EVX, a composite, lightweight EV concept platform which features YASA motors. The platform has been designed to make EVs lighter, safer and greener, with longer range and better performance. FW-EVX, features three YASA P400 motors, two at the rear, one at the front, each capable of producing 160kW.

Craig Wilson, Managing Director of Williams Advanced Engineering, commented: 'We welcome YASA's investment in this new facility, which clearly shows the growing global demand for its high performance electric motors. As a company with experience in providing e-powertrain knowledge to not only road car manufacturers but also in the world of competition cars, the development of a facility that can supply a greater number of electric motors in the UK (and beyond) can only be a good thing for the automotive industry.'

Chris Harris, CEO of YASA, added: 'One of the early projects that we worked on with Williams Advanced Engineering was the Jaguar C-X75 hypercar. It is a spectacular looking vehicle, but perhaps the C-X75's true beauty lies in its performance - it has the speed of a Bugatti Veyron but the emissions of a Prius. The project was managed by Williams who bought their rapid prototyping skills developed at the cutting-edge of Formula 1 to mainstream automotive development. Since the C-X75, we have continued to work closely with Williams Advanced Engineering on a range of other projects and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Williams team for their continued support, encouragement and their engineering vision which has driven forward the development of electric vehicles.'