Work

A Design-Oriented Scoping Review of Electric-Vehicle Gearbox Technologies: Architectures, Gear Ratio Selection, Efficiency, NVH, and Reliability

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Electric-vehicle gearboxes remain key design elements because they determine how motor speed and torque are converted into wheel speed and tractive effort over a driving cycle. This design-oriented scoping review synthesizes EV gearbox architectures, gear ratio selection, efficiency losses, NVH, planetary and compound planetary systems, lubrication, thermal behavior, reliability, manufacturability, and cost within one evidence-informed architecture-selection perspective. A structured search of Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, and MDPI identified 312 records; after removal of 71 duplicates, screening of 241 titles and abstracts, and full-text assessment of 61 articles, 40 sources formed the reproducible structured-search core. A gap-directed supplementary search then added 12 sources in underrepresented areas, producing a 52-source synthesis set. The revised analysis reports publication trends, evidence-level distributions, technical-focus frequencies, and a dimension-separated evidence-count table for ratio count, gear train topology, and integration level. The evidence indicates that single-speed reduction gearboxes remain the mature baseline for many passenger EVs, whereas two-speed, multi-speed, planetary, compound planetary, and integrated e-axle solutions require application-specific justification based on system-level benefits and risks. An illustrative screening calculation demonstrates the framework logic without being presented as production-level validation. The principal gaps are experimentally validated loss and NVH maps, coupled efficiency–thermal–lubrication–durability analysis, reliability-aware mission-profile validation, standardized benchmarks, and transparent comparison of compound planetary and integrated e-axle systems. Across heterogeneous study conditions, reported energy benefits range from 2.4% for fixed-ratio optimization to 15% for selected multi-speed comparisons; these results are not pooled because the vehicles, motor maps, drive cycles, loss models, and validation methods differ.

Source: Technologies

DOI: 10.3390/technologies14080466

Authors: Semaan Amine, Ossama Mokhiamar, Eddie Gazo-Hanna

Institutions: American University of the Middle East, Alexandria University

Language: English

Topic: Gear and Bearing Dynamics Analysis

Subfield: Mechanical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,930