Motor Induction motor design specifics

The short answer: they were both designed to do what they needed to do. One just cost more to do it.

The long answer: Horsepower is proportional to speed. If you could spin that industrial motor as fast as the Tesla motor could spin, it might get close to the same horsepower - just before it shatters into a thousand flying pieces. The industrial motor was designed to spin at one relatively slow speed, determined by the 60 Hz line frequency, and its horsepower specification reflects that. It could be driven faster with a variable-frequency drive, but at a minimum, the bearings would give out before it even came close to the Tesla's speed.

And there are other things added to the Tesla motor to help provide horsepower, besides bearings and a rotor that can take that velocity. The windings can take much more current and the cooling is pretty critical. And as you mentioned, the drive electronics are more sophisticated than what you would find in an industrial environment.

Simply put, one is an industrial workhorse, and the other is an thoroughbred racehorse.


Another aspect is that cars are designed to have a relatively short life. A couple of hundred thousand miles at an average 40mph is a mere 5000 hour design life.

In an industrial application that could mean replacing the motor in little over six months - utterly unacceptable. Lifetimes of ten to thirty years are expected and routinely achieved - that requires lower stress on all parts of the motor - bearings, windings, cooling, and so on.