The automotive industry is amidst an unprecedented multi-faceted transition
striving for more sustainable passenger mobility and freight transportation. The
rise of e-mobility is coming along with energy efficiency improvements,
greenhouse gas and non-exhaust emission reductions, driving/propulsion
technology innovations, and a hardware-software-ratio shift in vehicle
development for road-based electric vehicles. Current R&D activities are
focusing on electric motor topologies and designs, sustainability,
manufacturing, prototyping, and testing. This is leading to a new generation of
electric motors, which is considering recyclability, reduction of (rare earth)
resource usage, cost criticality, and a full product life-cycle assessment, to
gain broader market penetration. This paper outlines the latest advances of
multiple EU-funded research projects under the Horizon Europe framework and
showcases their complementarities to address the European priorities as
identified in the 2Zero SRIA. Target of this paper is to introduce a family of
European projects (EM-TECH, HEFT, MAXIMA, VOLTCAR and CliMAFlux), all following
the target of high efficiency and low-cost electric motors for circularity and
low use of rare resources. Especially, this paper will describe the latest
advances of the respective projects as well as their complementarity to address
the 2Zero strategy.