DRIVE UNIT FOR AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE AND METHOD FOR DETECTING FAULTS IN A DRIVE UNIT

The invention relates to a drive unit (10) for an electric vehicle, said drive unit comprising an electric motor (20), a transmission (30), a power electronics unit (40) for controlling the electric motor (20), and an acceleration sensor (50). The acceleration sensor (50) is located in a housing (42) of the power electronics unit (40), and the housing (42) of the power electronics units (40) is mechanically coupled to the electric motor (20) and/or to the transmission (30) such that vibrations generated by the electric motor (20) and/or by the transmission (30) are transmitted to the acceleration sensor (50) located in the housing (42) of the power electronics unit (40), said acceleration sensor being designed to pick up the transmitted vibrations and convert said vibrations into a measurement signal. The drive unit (10) comprises a signal processing unit which is designed to generate an order spectrogram from the measurement signal and from the speed of the electric motor (20). The invention also relates to a method for detecting faults in a drive unit (10) according to the invention, wherein vibrations which are generated by the electric motor (20) and/or by the transmission (30) are picked up by the acceleration sensor (50) and converted into a measurement signal, an order spectrogram is generated from the measurement signal and from the speed of the electric motor (20) using a signal processing unit, at least one level of the order spectrogram for at least one order is compared using a comparison unit with a threshold value assigned to said order, and a fault in the drive unit (10) is detected if the at least one level of the order spectrogram exceeds the threshold value assigned to said order.