Maytech Hub Motor, VESC and Truck Review

[JdogAwesome]

This will be my full review of the Maytech 90mm Hub Motors, Maytech Branded VESC and accompanying rear hub motor truck. I havent seen many very comprehensive reviews of the Maytech Hub Motors so I thought id post my results. I contacted Maytech on August 8 and ordered them on the 9th through Eileen at Maytech who was very nice and replied very quickly A+ on that so far. On August 22 they shipped from China and got delivered via UPS today, 2 day shipping! At first glance the packaging was great, box with bubble wrap and everything within its own box, except the truck, it was just covered in bubble wrap, which was fine. The hub motor came in at 1014g, and with the truck 1450g. In comparison to my Carvon Single Hub which weighs 1690g, though thats with another normal wheel as well. The hub looks ok so far, only thing that snot great is where the wires come out of the hub theres this kind of black goop thats spread over it and just kinda looks messy. Other than that not to bad, onto the VESC. The VESC actually looks quite nice so far though the DRV is slightly crooked , the soldering looks pretty good and the parts look legit though that doesn’t mean much lol. The truck looks ok, it doesnt way much and doesnt feel very high quality compared to the Carvon one, though it will suffice. Overall first impressions are pretty good and ill either update this post or add a reply once ive done a teardown of the hub and tested everything on my board, stay tuned!

EDIT: The hubs are advertised as 60KV though it’s more realistically around 85-90KV because I got upto 20MPH on only 6S.

Update #3

So I’ve finally finished installing the hubs and got to test them out! Right off the bat I noticed the crazy torque, acceleration and braking power these sensored hubs have compared to my single drive Carvon V2! These motors are also incredibly quite, I mean dead silent compared to my Carvon thanks to im guessing the sensors. So far these hubs seem to be equally as efficient as my Carvon hub estimating about 12-13 miles of range though I will do a full drain test ride to find out. Onto the heat and current ratings of these motors because that seemed to be a big concern for many people. So far these have handled really well, I have max motor current set to 50A and it only draws around 16A at full throttle cruising though when accelerating hard it will draw a solid 50A or 60A for just a few seconds. After riding 2 miles at full throttle and starting and stopping a few times the motor only reached a max of 48C though I will see how it fairs doing longer runs. I personally dont have any hills near me so i haven’t had a chance to test the hill climbing ability though when I do ill update about that as well.

Now onto some of the cons of these hubs, which there aren’t many of. Biggest one for me personally, is speed. At full throttle these only got me upto a max of around 20mph according to my GPS. Now I am only riding these at 6S so I think at 12S you could get upto possibly 30mph though im going to work on going faster with my current setup. Compared to my Carvon which got me upto 32mph these are pretty slow. Speed is definitely the biggest problem with these for me though the acceleration, torque and quietness will definitely help out weigh that for some people. Though for me I really like going fast and I was hoping to get past 32, possibly closer 40 which simply will not be happening with these motors. Alright im going to move onto some smaller gripes I have about these motors and then ill wrap it up. First of all I didnt realize it, but that phase leads on these hubs are way to long, like even if they were half there length I think it would still be a bit much, definitely need to reduce the length of them because they take up a bunch of space inside my enclosure. Other than that I guess there isnt much else that I haven’t covered before like the black goop around where the leads come out of the motors which I still think is pretty crappy. All in all I think these are pretty good motors for the price, especially for people who dont want to go very fast, but want good acceleration and overall a board that feels nice to ride. Below are some pics of the board as well as my VESC settings.

I also took a ride with Ackmaniac’s VESC Monitor app overlay and it can be found on YouTube, HERE

Not sure why it says Sensorless but its not its in Sensored mode

Update #4 on post 35

[ShutterShock]

Good idea to get a full review in on this stuff, I would imagine a lot of people will continue to keep buying it. Always good to have an experienced user’s input, look forward to the results!

[evoheyax]

Everything that I hear about these are bad… So it’d be interesting to hear something to the contrary.

From my experience, those stators are simply too small. Around the same size as hummies v1 and v2 motors. They will overheat if you push too many amps. And with my size (200 lb) and hills, I don’t think they will last very long.

[Rinzler]

You should add the most important part, how they ride,how long till they overheat on a hill, maybe something about efficiency, motor noise ect. This was like more of an unboxing review, just my 2 cents.

[JdogAwesome]

@evoheyax yeah I can imagine that though I only weigh like 130lbs and there aren’t any hills near where I live so I guess we’ll see!

@Rinzler yeah it was only supposed to be an unboxing review cause I haven’t had a chance to install or test them yet, once I do I’ll update the post with far more details.

[Namasaki]

It will be interesting to see how those non upgraded Vescs hold up with hub motors. Are you planning to run FOC or BLDC?

[JdogAwesome]

I’m planning on running BLDC, and the PCB overall is the same as my enertion VESC I’m going to run it over CAN with. Also I’m planning on taking off the heatshrink and adding heatsinks to the FET’s like my current VESC.

[onepunchboard]

Problem with these vesc is that for some reason drv gets hotter than fets. So u might need to heatsink the drv too.

[JdogAwesome]

Hmm, I’m guessing cause there not legit DRV’s and they are less efficient then. I’ll heatsink it as well, and if I have any problems I’ll just replace it cause I have a few DRV chips leftover from a friend’s VESC repair.

[GunnarK]

What makes a vesc be considered ‘upgraded’? Heatsinks only?

I have this same vesc I believe, bought from eskating.eu. Haven’t had the opportunity to test it since some essential parts are in the mail.

[jotatsu]

I’ve always wondered, i work with software as a professional and hardware as hobby. How does a company fake a drv?

[JdogAwesome]

@GunnarK I think @Namasaki means upgraded components like the Ollin VESCs with larger ceramic caps and some just different parts.

@jotatsu fake DRV’s or other fake components usually mean that there bought from a company that either sometimes reuses recycled chips, makes there own, but either with smaller dies or just in a cheaper way that makes them less efficient, reliable and all around worse than genuine parts or just re label different chips as being a better one than they a actually are, I’ve had that quite a few times. Once tried to order some HV-LM2596 Buck Converter IC’s from AliExpress for really cheap and they where just re labeled normal 2596’s that popped above 40V when they were supposed to reach 60V. Long story short just order important parts like MOSFET’s or IC’s from legit sellers like Mouser Digikey or my preferred place Arrow.com.

[Namasaki]

Not just heat sinks. Upgraded components. Ollin Vescs have upgraded components Axle Vescs have upgraded components Enertion Focboxes have upgraded components. These are more reliable than the versions you get from China.

[GunnarK]

Ok but the Chinese versions are reliable enough for belt-drive systems? Of course, one can always do better…

[JdogAwesome]

Well reliability is more on the side of how long they’ll last than if they can be used for a belt drive system. Anyways yeah you could obviously do better than these VESC’s but they should definitely work for a belt drive.

[jotatsu]

The thing here is i dont see how that works. The chip is 5-6 usd in aliexpress and in mouser, even in alibaba are 4-5 in bulk, so no chinese version i can see is cheaper than original new one. If one says its a clone it’s probably the same factory or factories as the original one, because taping a new chip aint easy or cheap, even if you somehow stole the layout. I’ve seen for example pin compatible smt32 or ftdi clones, but the market of those vs the drv8302 is orders of magnitude different.

Maybe, maybe the used chips have some validity. Have anyone been able to identify “fake” drv8302? how?

[onepunchboard]

it could be silicone lottery, they may be grade the chips for Grade A pass or B pass, and sell it to different vendors, it’s very common in china.

[JdogAwesome]

@jotatsu yeah that’s a good point, but like @onepunchboard said they could be doing that as well. Theres also a lot of other factors that go into how hot the IC gets, for example maybe there using some sort of cheaper PCB material that doesn’t conduct heat as well, idk.

[JdogAwesome]

Update #1

In the first post I said I was going to disassemble the hub motor though in my attempt to take it apart I stripped two of the 3M screws on each side of the hub. It seems that there held in with some sort of very strong thread lock so im just going to leave it be. Thankfully though this guy did a great review of the 90mm Hubs HERE.

I also tested the hub with the Maytech VESC and everything worked very well there the sensors are very nice and I can tell how they affect acceleration, cant wait to test them out! Sadly the Maytech VESC’s have no boot loader so you have to install the boot loader onto them with an ST Link V2 which I bought for like $5 off eBay. Once I do that ill update the firmware to Ackmaniacs 2.54v like my Enertion VESC, hook them up over CAN and hopefully get the whole thing going! Anyways below is a pic of the hubs installed on the truck.

EDIT: Also I need to make a JST 1.5mm pitch to 2mm pitch sensor adapater cause the VESC only came with one and I obviously need two for both motors on each VESC. Ordered the parts off Arrow and they should be here shorty.

[JdogAwesome]

Update #3

Finally finished the board and got to test the hubs, updated the original thread with the rest of my review!