The shift toward new mobility is often framed as a story of batteries, software and electrification. Yet beneath the visible changes shaping electric vehicles, hybrid powertrains, hydrogen systems and emerging mobility platforms lies a less obvious but equally consequential transformation. The lubrication solutions that lubricate, cool, insulate and protect these systems are no longer background materials. They have become active, engineered components that influence efficiency, safety, durability and ultimately whether new mobility concepts succeed at scale. In practice, this means lubrication and functional fluid solutions are now central levers for higher performance, greater safety and better overall efficiency in next‑generation mobility systems.
As propulsion technologies diversify and vehicle architecture evolves, the traditional assumptions that once governed lubrication in internal combustion engine (ICE) systems no longer apply. Instead of thinking about fluids as commodities, new mobility views them as integral design elements that interact with mechanical, electrical and thermal systems.
In many new energy vehicle architectures, for example, electric driveline fluids do far more than simply lubricate gears. In “wet” e‑axles, the fluid may directly contact e‑motor windings, coatings, or other electronic components, which means it must be formulated for copper and material compatibility while also delivering carefully tuned electrical behavior. The material must balance conductivity and insulation to prevent current flow while simultaneously preventing static buildup.
From Powertrains to Systems
For decades, lubrication strategies were built around the ICE. Fluids were tasked primarily with reducing friction, managing wear and tolerating high operating temperatures. While these functions remain important, they are no longer sufficient in electrified and hybrid systems, where energy is distributed differently and performance constraints are more tightly coupled.
Battery powered electric vehicles draw all propulsion energy from a finite onboard source. Any inefficiency, whether from friction, heat loss, or material incompatibility, directly reduces usable range. Hybrid systems introduce additional complexity by blending combustion and electric architectures, while hydrogen fuel cell platforms bring their own thermal and corrosion challenges. Across all these platforms, lubrication is no longer isolated to a single component. It must support tightly integrated systems operating at higher speeds, under higher loads and with greater sensitivity to noise, vibration and temperature fluctuations.
This shift from component level optimization to system level engineering is one of the defining characteristics of new mobility. Lubricants are expected to perform multiple roles simultaneously: lubricating moving parts, dissipating heat, protecting sensitive materials, reducing friction and interacting safely with electrical components. This system‑level view extends across batteries, e‑axles, power electronics and even towards the efficient cooling of charging infrastructure, energy storage and data centers. It is the combination of different products like driveline fluids, thermal fluids, coatings, specialized greases and interface materials that must work together as a coherent package rather than as standalone products.
Thermal Management as Design Constraint
Electrification fundamentally reshapes vehicle design, placing thermal management at the center of system performance. In ICE vehicles, high operating temperatures helped evaporate contaminants such as water and provided predictable thermal behavior. In electric and hybrid platforms, operating temperatures are often lower and less uniform, creating new challenges for fluid formulation and system design.
Batteries, power electronics, electric motors, charging, storage and computing systems all generate heat that must be carefully managed to maintain efficiency, safety and longevity. As a result, thermal fluids are now as critical to vehicle performance as driveline lubricants. Both indirect cooling systems, typically using water-glycol mixtures and direct immersion cooling systems, which rely on dielectric fluids, are increasingly deployed depending on application requirements. Indirect systems, often adapted from legacy ICE applications, focus on corrosion protection and keeping metals and current‑carrying components within safe temperature windows, while newer immersion concepts represent a significant departure from traditional approaches.
By allowing fluids to come into direct contact with heat-generating components, these systems can reduce thermal resistance, enable more compact designs and eliminate heavy cooling hardware. However, they also place far greater demands on fluid purity, electrical property durability and material compatibility. These are factors that must be addressed at the formulation stage, not left to mechanical design alone.
Electrification Amplifies Secondary Challenges
As electric powertrains grow quieter, issues that were once masked by engine noise become immediately perceptible. Noise, vibration and harshness now sit high on the list of design priorities, particularly for premium and commercial electric vehicles. Even minor irregularities in lubrication behavior can translate into audible noise or vibration that erodes perceived quality.
Material compatibility also takes on heightened importance. Electric motors rely heavily on copper windings, specialized coatings and sensitive electronic components. Lubricants and greases must be engineered to avoid corrosive interactions, prevent electrically conductive deposits and maintain stable properties over long service intervals. Fluids that are too conductive can pose safety risks, while those that are completely non-conductive may allow static charge to build. Balancing
the conductivity of these fluids requires careful formulation to maintain both electrical safety and long‑term stability.
Operating conditions further complicate matters. Electric drivetrains often run at significantly higher rotational speeds than their combustion counterparts, increasing shear‑induced viscosity loss and raising the risk of aeration and foaming, particularly in architectures that lack the traditional sump volume where entrained air can dissipate. At the same time, lower average temperatures in many NEV systems can allow water contamination to persist rather than evaporate, placing additional demands on oxidative stability and a fluid’s ability to tolerate and manage small amounts of moisture over long service intervals.
Together, these factors reinforce a central reality of new mobility: performance, durability, acoustics and safety are no longer separable concerns. They are interdependent outcomes shaped in large part by fluid behavior.
Efficiency, Range and Sustainability Interlinked
Discussions around sustainability in mobility frequently focus on fuel sources or emissions regulations, but lubricant technology plays a quieter yet substantial role in reducing environmental impact. By minimizing frictional losses, advanced lubricants help ensure that more stored energy is converted into motion rather than wasted as heat. In e‑axle applications, for instance, recent formulations have cut viscosity at operating temperature dramatically while still delivering improved gear protection and copper compatibility compared to traditional automatic transmission fluids. As a result, they help close historic tradeoffs between efficiency and durability in high‑speed electric drivelines. Improved thermal management keeps batteries and electronics operating within optimal temperature windows, extending component life and stabilizing performance over time.
These efficiency gains translate directly into extended vehicle range and reduced energy demand, supporting both customer expectations and regulatory objectives. In many cases, lubricant-enabled design choices also allow for lighter systems, longer service intervals and simplified architectures, further lowering lifecycle emissions and resource consumption. Even in comparatively small volumes, performance greases for wheel hubs, electric motor bearings and other critical components play an outsized role in this equation by carrying high loads, reducing noise and extending maintenance intervals.
In doing so, they directly support both perceived quality and sustainability targets. Sustainability, in this context, is not driven by a single formulation change. It emerges from system level optimization, where lubricants are engineered to support durability, efficiency and compatibility across the entire mobility ecosystem.
Lubrication Strategy in Practice
As New Mobility technologies mature, the role of lubrication partners is expanding beyond product supply into collaborative engineering. Effective strategies begin early in the design process, where lubricants are considered alongside mechanical components, electronics and thermal systems rather than selected after systems architectures are established.
This approach increasingly defines how companies support OEMs and system integrators navigating electrification, hybridization and hydrogen-based mobility. Rather than focusing on isolated products, Fuchs works across electric driveline fluids, thermal management solutions and performance greases to address the full operating environment of modern mobility platforms. Extensive testing capabilities allow customer components and candidate lubricants to be evaluated together — often on dedicated rigs — under simulated customer operating conditions. This enables the most promising options to be pre-validated for compatibility, NVH behavior and durability before the OEM commits its own test benches or prototypes.
Within this framework, dedicated product families support key NEV systems including e‑axles, indirectly and directly cooled batteries, chargers, storage units, data centers and fuel cell powertrains, while sharing common development principles around material compatibility, electrical performance and long‑term stability. Acting as a system and scaling partner, Fuchs connects these fluids and greases into a complete solution set that can be adapted across platforms and regions as architectures and regulations evolve.
By treating lubricants and functional fluids as co-engineered elements, this model helps reduce development risk, shorten validation cycles and support scalable deployment across vehicle types and regions. It reflects a broader industry shift toward viewing lubricants not as consumables, but as enabling technologies that shape how new mobility systems are designed and brought to market.
Invisible Technologies
Visible innovations — such as sleek vehicle designs, fast-charging infrastructure and advanced software systems — often dominate discussions of new mobility. Yet some of the most critical advancements occur behind the scenes, within the lubricants that manage heat, reduce friction, protect materials and enable increasingly compact and efficient system architectures. As propulsion technologies diversify and vehicle platforms become more tightly integrated, these fluids increasingly determine how far systems can be pushed — thermally, electrically and mechanically — without compromising reliability or safety.
What emerges from this shift is a new understanding of mobility engineering itself. Lubrication and functional fluids are no longer specified in isolation or optimized for a single component. They are developed in response to interconnected system demands — higher rotational speeds, greater power density, stricter acoustic expectations, evolving materials and regulatory pressure around efficiency and sustainability. In this context, the distinction between lubrication, cooling, insulation and protection continues to blur, particularly as integrated e-axles, immersion cooled batteries and compact power electronics become more common.
Looking ahead, the influence of lubricants will only grow as new mobility expands beyond passenger vehicles into commercial fleets, infrastructure and emerging platforms such as hydrogen systems and urban air mobility. Regulatory frameworks focused on lifecycle impact, chemical safety and energy efficiency will further elevate the importance of formulations that support durability, compatibility and long service life.
That evolution is already steering development toward high‑purity synthetics, advanced additive technologies and more sustainable lubricant chemistries that can meet tightening chemical‑safety and lifecycle requirements. Lubrication and functional fluids are not transitional technologies bridging old and new mobility paradigms. They are structural enablers, quietly shaping how next-generation systems are designed, scaled and sustained. By enabling system-level efficiency and resilience, these invisible technologies help ensure that the future of mobility is not only electrified but engineered to last.
Damian Weinzierl is heading the New Mobility business at Fuchs, driving mobility transformation at the world’s biggest independent lubrication manufacturer. He previously spent a decade in strategy and automotive consulting in Germany, the U.S., South Korea, and China focusing on future mobility trends like electric mobility, connectivity, and autonomous driving.