The motor does bugger all in a modern hoist. Mine is a 4.5t, so no slouch same as what a few garages in Town are using. The modern hoist uses the hydraulics which is why they can use single phase just as well as a three phase. The power is in the hydraulics the motor is there to simply power the hydraulics so draws bugger all compared to a 20 year old hoist.
The work in lifting a car is related to the speed of lifting it while the power required for the lift is related to the time that work takes.
The power required to lift the car must be provided to the hydraulics by the electric motor. The faster the lift occurs, the more power the electric motor will consume in pressurising the fluid used to lift the car. (the higher the duty cycle isn’t a power thing but more a durability thing)…
Since work = force x delta velocity squared / 2 (or something similar) and power = work / time, it’s clear the faster the lift occurs the higher the power requirement. It’s just physics. If such physics didn’t apply, a small pissy single cylinder engine would be able to drive a car down the drag strip in 6 seconds flat (but we know that takes a big engine and huge power to accelerate that fast down the 1/4 mile).
Interestingly common electric motor efficiency haven't changed much in 100 years and I’d expect/guess hydraulic systems also haven’t changed much in efficiency either…
But I really don’t know about hoists. It may be that there isn’t much difference in lifting speed between single phase and 3 phase hoists in which case power consumption would be comparable since lift speed is comparable.…
