The automotive industry and its suppliers are undergoing profound structural change. Electrification, volatile markets and geopolitical instability, along with increasingly intense global competition, are creating high costs and innovation pressures across the entire value chain. These developments not only affect the general drivetrain components but also rotor shafts for electric motors, which combine high functional density with demanding manufacturing and quality requirements. Recent restructuring efforts, plant closures and bankruptcies have highlighted the need to critically reassess existing manufacturing concepts, especially for components such as rotor shafts with integrated functional elements. For automotive suppliers, technological capability and cost efficiency are no longer the only priorities; process robustness and investment security are increasingly moving into focus. New manufacturing solutions must not only be technically convincing, but also enable a substantial reduction in manufacturing costs, energy consumption, the associated CO2 emissions and process complexity (Refs. 1,2). At the same time, the requirements for drivetrain components are undergoing fundamental change. Electrified drives operate at high rotational speeds in compact designs and set higher standards for noise performance, efficiency and power density. Helical gears play a key role in meeting these demands, as they enable improved operating characteristics and more uniform load distribution. However, their industrial production has so far been carried out primarily through machining processes, which involve material removal, multistage process chains and correspondingly high energy consumption. Based on rising energy prices and regulatory requirements to reduce CO₂ emissions, the focus is increasing on how to make the production of highly loaded gear geometries such as those used on rotor shafts more cost-effective and resource-efficient. Axial forming is an incremental cold forming process first patented by the Felss Group in 1997 and enables the precise production of rotationally symmetric components with integrated functional geometries. While the process is already established for spline connections, transferring axial forming to the helical gear profiles frequently used on rotor shafts introduces additional technological and mechanical challenges. Through targeted process development, supported by structural and forming simulations of the machine behavior and tool loading, a new machine generation has been developed. This machine generation provides the required kinematic capabilities and structural rigidity to form helical gears directly on rotor shafts in a dimensionally accurate and reproducible manner and, at the same time, offers a more energy-efficient and CO₂-friendly alternative to conventional machining.