Heat Treating of EV Transmissions

As consumers embrace Electric Vehicle (EV) technology, the automotive industry is moving quickly into replacing internal combustion engines (ICE) and traditional transmissions. The change to electrically driven vehicles offers new challenges to the gear manufacturing world, and most importantly new specifications to heat treat these gears - specifically quieter gear sets and higher torque ratings. Today’s EVs have a much lower tolerance for noise from the gear set to power the vehicle; therefore, this continues the need for even quieter and stronger gears. This technical presentation will illustrate the heat treat and distortion specifications for these new gears, along with answering the “why” of selecting low pressure vacuum carburizing (LPC) for new programs around the world.