Yeah, the unsprung weight, handling issue and reliability due to vibration and road impacts are problems. The amount of space it actually saves isn't that large

Yeah, the unsprung weight, handling issue and reliability due to vibration and road impacts are problems. The amount of space it actually saves isn't that large. The Tesla motors essentially fit along the axels. Seems to me like a dead end. Also the hub motors need to spin at the wheel RPM, which might not be in the peak efficiency for motors of that size or dimension, so it becomes a challenging engineering problem to try to match efficiencies with chassis mounted motors, which can be geared to run at their peak efficiency ranges.