Lynch motor

Lore & Background

The Lynch motor was developed from 1985 through 1992, with improvements by Lynch and input from Richard Fletcher and his project team, including William Read, at London Innovation Network (LIN). LIN financed the patents and prototypes, including a batch made by Ouroussoff Engineering. In 1989, motors were used in the Countess of Arran's world electric boat speed record attempt, assembled by Lynch with help from William Read, who assembled armatures in his hospital bed after a car accident. Hotax was approached but lost interest after Lynch showed them how to make the motor; Trevor Lees left Hotax in January 1993 to join the Lynch Motor Company as factory manager. Following a rift between Lynch and LIN in November 1996, intellectual property rights were split between Lynch IP (50%) and LEMCO (50%), with J P Hansen group as main shareholder. Lynch joined Agni Motors in 2002, where the motor is built and marketed as the Agni motor. A licensed design was made by Briggs & Stratton as the Etek DC Motor. The latest Agni Motor is manufactured by Saietta Group, formed after the merger of Agility Global and Agni Motors in May 2015.

Reader's Guide

The Lynch motor's significance lies in its unique axial gap design and construction, which allows high efficiency (80–90%) in a lightweight, pancake-shaped package. It was used in the 1989 world electric boat speed record, achieving over 80 km/h. The motor was adopted by Swiss company ASMO for electric go-kart drive systems, where its efficiency extends battery life. It powered the world's first crewed electric helicopter, flown by Pascal Chretien, which set a Guinness World Record on 12 August 2011 and received the IDTechEx Electric Vehicles Land Sea & Air award in 2012. The motor was also used in the ENV fuel cell motorcycle (2005), the Orange Juice electric dragster, a modified G-Wiz on Top Gear (30 July 2008), and Rob Barber's winning bike at the inaugural Manx TTxGP on 12 June 2009. The documentary 'The White Diamond' described it as 'one of the world's leading motors in terms of power and mass,' noting Lynch taught himself electrical engineering without university. The patents and license rights are held by Lynch IP, which sold a license to Briggs and Stratton; LEMCO now trades as LMC, which owns Lynch IP and all rights.

Did You Know?

• The Lynch motor is held together purely by magnets, without conventional fasteners.
• In 1989, four Lynch motors powered the boat An Stradag to a world record speed of over 80 km/h.
• The motor's armature uses U-shaped copper strips with legs bent 45 degrees clockwise and anticlockwise.
• Cedric Lynch never attended university and developed his own algebra to design the motor.

Design & Engineering Innovation

The Lynch motor sets itself apart through its axial gap architecture, producing a compact pancake-like form. Instead of copper windings wrapped around a stator, the design sandwiches ferrite blocks between thin metal strips, with the whole assembly held together purely by magnetic force. A spinning armature rides on a spindle between two fixed banks of eight permanent magnets, while eight brushes—four positive, four negative—feed current to the rotating element.

The armature geometry is where the engineering gets distinctive. Each coil is cut from an insulated copper strip bent into a U-shape, one leg angled forty-five degrees clockwise and the other anticlockwise. Multiple bends guide each leg radially through the ferrite ring until the ends terminate ninety degrees apart, joined by a crimp at the outer edge. Bare metal on the inner front face forms the commutator surface for brush contact.

A subtle material choice amplifies performance: because flux travels sideways through the laminations along a single axis, the designers could employ grain-oriented silicon steel, the same material prized in large transformers. In a radial gap motor this anisotropic material is difficult to align with the field, but in the axial gap geometry it delivers higher efficiency. The motor is offered in weights from three to eleven kilograms, producing 1.5 to 11 kilowatts at 80 to 90 percent efficiency.

Invention & Early Development

Cedric Lynch conceived the motor in 1979, though the formal patent was not filed until 18 December 1986. The years between those dates, and the stretch from 1985 through 1992, saw the design and its manufacturing tooling refined incrementally. Lynch worked closely with Richard Fletcher and his project team at the London Innovation Network, which included William Read. LIN bankrolled the patent filings in Lynch's name and also funded the construction of prototypes, including a batch produced by Ouroussoff Engineering that incorporated ideas later carried into subsequent motor versions.

By 1989, LIN had successfully produced small batches and individual units and was actively seeking a manufacturing partner. One of the earliest high-profile applications came that same year, when four Lynch motors powered the boat An Stradag, driven by the Countess of Arran, to a world electric boat speed record of just over eighty kilometres per hour. The motors for that record attempt were assembled by Lynch himself, with a remarkable assist from William Read, who built armatures in his hospital bed while recovering from a car accident.

This period established the motor's technical credibility and set the stage for the larger production efforts that followed.

From Prototype to Production

LIN's search for a manufacturing partner in 1989 led to an approach at Hotax, where Trevor Lees worked. After Lynch demonstrated the manufacturing process, the company lost interest. Lees, however, saw the potential. He left Hotax in January 1993 and joined the Lynch Motor Company, a LIN subsidiary, as factory manager to help scale up production. The operation used previously developed tooling alongside new designs by Lynch, some fabricated by local toolmaker Roger Cox.

The small team engineered a production-standard motor under the Lynch Motor Company Ltd banner. That arrangement fractured in November 1996, when a rift between Lynch and LIN led to a split in intellectual property rights. Lynch IP retained the patents while the Lynch Motor Company held fifty percent. A new entity, LEMCO, was formed with the J P Hansen group as main shareholder and Lynch and Lees as minor holders, claiming the other half.

By 2002, Lynch had moved to the Indian company Agni Motors, where the design is built and marketed as the Agni motor. Briggs & Stratton also secured a license, producing it as the Etek DC Motor. In May 2015, Agility Global and Agni Motors merged to form the Saietta Group, which now manufactures and distributes the latest Agni Motor models.

Applications & Enduring Legacy

Beyond the workshop, the Lynch motor found its most dramatic early proving ground on the water. In 1989, four units powered the boat An Stradag, piloted by the Countess of Arran, to a world electric boat speed record exceeding eighty kilometres per hour. The motors were assembled by Lynch with the help of William Read, who built armatures from his hospital bed while recovering from a car accident—a detail that underscores the hands-on, scrappy nature of the project's early days.

On land, the Swiss company ASMO adopted the motor for its electric go-kart drive systems. The motor's 80 to 90 percent efficiency extends battery life between charges, which in turn improves the operating economics of running an electric kart track. This practical advantage made the design attractive to operators who needed reliable, efficient power in a compact form factor.

The motor's influence also reached the cultural sphere; it is referenced in the documentary The White Diamond, which profiles a lighter-than-air ship. Through licensed variants like the Agni motor and the Briggs & Stratton Etek, and through the continued production by the Saietta Group since the 2015 merger, the design Cedric Lynch first sketched in 1979 continues to find new markets more than four decades later.