Soldiers still burn hours and calories moving water, ammunition, and radios across ground that wrecks ordinary trucks. Pack animals once filled that gap. Conventional electric robots often stall in the same mud, sand, snow, and rubble because their motors sit in the middle of the chassis and feed torque through gearboxes and shafts that lose grip the moment the surface turns ugly. ESOX Group finished a compact uncrewed platform, called the X2, this summer that tries to skip that failure.
Four in-wheel motors, specifically Theron motors, lie within the hubs and produce 1,000 newton meters of torque, 250 of which goes to each corner. That’s a lot of power without the need for a gearbox or driveshaft, or the additional weight that comes with them. Devan Roberts, their VP of defense programs, believes that this arrangement eliminates all known flaws in uncrewed ground vehicles and that nothing, no terrain, gradient, or payload, can halt it in its tracks. These motors are relatively quiet and cold to run, which is significant because heat and noise will not trip all of the sensors designed to detect engine signatures.
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The platform weighs 300 kilograms (about 661 pounds), and testers have already successfully loaded another 300 kilos to match the vehicle’s weight. Later on, they hope to increase it to 600 kilograms. An 8 kilowatt hour solid-state battery powers things, divided into two 4 kilowatt hour modules. ESOX asserts that this chemistry stores about twice the energy of lithium-ion cells found in fielded military vehicles, giving them a longer range or allowing them to battle for the same amount of time but with less weight. If that wasn’t enough, the batteries have a lesser fire danger than liquid electrolyte packs.
The chassis is much smaller than a typical four-by-four, and early test cars included 12 inch motors in a tank-steer layout, as well as some sophisticated airless tires designed to withstand punctures. ESOX OS software allows engineers to create a digital twin of the vehicle before they begin connecting gear together. Once deployed, the device begins transmitting live telematics and sensor data and accepts over-the-air updates for the duration of the vehicle’s life. All of the sensor packages, autonomous modes, and communication layers can be altered without affecting the motors or batteries, so you can essentially keep the core and construct your own versions around it.
ESOX Group is very new, having formed from Donut Lab’s defense division and combined with Finnish unmanned systems expert ESOX Aero in late 2025. They have teams in the UK, Finland, and Estonia, and their CEO, Dan Walmsley, previously worked at McLaren Automotive. They unveiled a tech demonstrator at CES 2026, and customer pilots began in late August, once the platform was declared ready. Any Tank Steer metrics, like as 120kW peak and over 200 kilometers of range, refer to the general design rather than the specific 1,000-newton-meter X2 configuration that is currently being tested.
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