One of the photos really brought something home to me. Where I would expect to see an axle or something to provide torque to wheels from the engine, there is just a yellow wire. I know that's how electric cars work. But something about it in the racing car context just brings it home to me - electricity just works differently to all our other intuitions about the world. Factories used to have bands and axels taking p…
From my own experience: a popular home woodworker tool from the middle of the 20th century is a Shop Smith. It had a motor that you would couple to the various mounted attachments to run the lathe or the band saw or the table saw etc one tool at a time. I guess part of the appeal was certainly the size savings, but I have to think it was also only having to buy one electric motor. Life changingly good motors are now commodity parts, and artisanally crafted ones are setting acceleration world records. Cool time to be alive.