Back in the 1990s when I was working full time on designing the power electronics for electric vehicles we started with simple induction motors (up to 100kW) and full vector control, ie, a VFD. One thing an electric vehicle needs is full torque at zero speed which makes the controller a bit more upmarket than VFDs intended for machine tools. We then modified the software to deal with trapezoidal motors aka brushless DC. We then did another tweak for permanent magnet motors, similar to BLDC motors. We used off the shelf commercial motors, which were large. Now motors are much better tuned to the application. Like IC engines electric motors in cars rarely run at full power for any significant period of time, so the motors can be small compared to full rated motors. We used a single motor per vehicle, apart from buses where we needed two motors gearbox coupled to get the power. These days each wheel tends to have it's own motor which can be smaller and dispenses with the need for gearboxes and differentials.
We did a project with Oxford University with a weird kind of induction motor that had 10 poles and 12 windings, or the other way round, can't remember which. I never did get to the bottom of understanding how it worked.
I think modern vehicles use a mix of induction and BLDC. If anything the battery management system is more important. One thing we discovered early on is that one needs to monitor each cell and use a charge balancing algorithm. Otherwise the batteries get out of kilter and one ends up overcharging or over-discharging individual batteries.
Electric gliders mostly use BLDC for self-sustainers but the only self-launching glider we have at our site uses an induction motor (I think).
Andrew
Edited By Andrew Johnston on 28/11/2020 14:47:14