Just stick four on a car with fans on and there's your flying car. Not much range though probably.
Current motors seem to suffice just fine:
Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
321–330 of 616 posts
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish more people on the road realized the extent to which weight reduction improves all aspects of the driving experience... it really does compound unlike any other change that you can make to a vehicle. IMO heavy vehicles are a scam and the antithesis of the direction we should be moving.
I agree with you however I believe weight and safety are in a complex relationship right now, which has nothing to do with performance and handling. Unfortunately I feel much less safe in a Fiat 500 when a significant portion of cars in the road weigh nearly 3 tonnes and perhaps can't even see me. I suspect most people are in SUVs because they're the pragmatic trade off between safety and convenience, not because the…
I wonder if larger/heavy non-commercial vehicles were taxed at a very high rate, would more people choose Fiat 500 sized cars?
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#323It's easy to forget that most of the weight in an electric car is the battery . It's ICE cars where a lot of the weight is in the motor. That being said, could this be adapted so that a 2.8lb motor produces 100 hp? That would allow putting a small motor in each wheel, thus completely eliminating axels, driveshafts, and allow recapturing the space they used to occupy. It also wouldn't significantly impact unsprung wei…
First, no, it won't scale like that.
Second, don't forget that you're trading one complexity for another. Eliminate a drive shaft and you still have to get power to the wheel somehow, which means now you're running high power electrical cable in a very dynamic environment with exposure to the elements. On top of that, you need to cool the electric motor, so you're probably running some kind of fluid out to it. Not that it isn't a solvable problem, but it probably doesn't reduce the weight much, if at all, when the system is all added up. You'll find that while you eliminate an axle, you still need to mechanically connect the two wheels together (look at the rear subframe on an FWD car) for strength, which also reduces the weight loss. Then the steering on the front... etc.
Until a more significant change than this motor (where maybe a 2.8lb motor could produce 100hp without needing active cooling), we're better off with "inboard" motors still.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a game changer but I wonder if ligher motors allow you to do things like have one motor per drive wheel, removing the need for differential gearboxes? Then you can do clever things with traction control without having to use the ABS system to brake the drive wheels. Or dramatically change the turning circle on big cars and vans. Maybe even reduce the size and weight of the braking system by taking on some of that…
Putting the motors in the wheel is bad for a separate reason: Unsprung weight. Every ounce you have in the hubs that don't float on the suspension reduces certain suspension attributes. You end up with a crappier ride and poor performance.
If the motors are light enough, though, that might be acceptable... especially if they can make an even smaller version for that application. (You probably don't need 750 kW on each wheel - even for a supercar that'd be excessive.)
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a game changer but I wonder if ligher motors allow you to do things like have one motor per drive wheel, removing the need for differential gearboxes? Then you can do clever things with traction control without having to use the ABS system to brake the drive wheels. Or dramatically change the turning circle on big cars and vans. Maybe even reduce the size and weight of the braking system by taking on some of that…
Putting the motors in the wheel is bad for a separate reason: Unsprung weight. Every ounce you have in the hubs that don't float on the suspension reduces certain suspension attributes. You end up with a crappier ride and poor performance.
Yes, I agree. I was careful about how I worded this to avoid saying anything about the motors actually being in the wheels for this reason.
Although, I guess at some point in the future if we can get the weight down low enough and the strength of the motor high enough we could replace the existing braking system with a motor for the same weight penalty we already pay.
In an ideal world all the energy from breaking would be used for regen anyway.
I'm not sure how close we are to that but it's an interesting thought experiment thinking about the trade offs we might be able to make in future.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#326> YASA, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz, already produces motors that power some of the world’s fastest and most expensive cars.
Never underestimate the swabians.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you however I believe weight and safety are in a complex relationship right now, which has nothing to do with performance and handling. Unfortunately I feel much less safe in a Fiat 500 when a significant portion of cars in the road weigh nearly 3 tonnes and perhaps can't even see me. I suspect most people are in SUVs because they're the pragmatic trade off between safety and convenience, not because the…
I wonder if larger/heavy non-commercial vehicles were taxed at a very high rate, would more people choose Fiat 500 sized cars?
Maybe... I think it would definitely help. I think just driving a smaller car that puts you in control might cause a lot of people to switch. I know that when I've done the opposite; gone from a very performance oriented car to a random person's SUV, I've felt extremely unsafe comparatively in breaking, merging, changing lanes, parking, etc. etc. I think most people just have little experience to compare it to anymore.
I also think it's odd that people don't already choose other options w/o a tax in place, considering the price of a bigger vehicle is almost always just going to be higher because of materials and a bunch of other factors.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Dropping 10 lbs per motor is HUGE. Dropping 30 is amazing. Whatever is dropped, it's significant. Pretend that it isn't all you want, but anyone doing production work knows how important this is. I'm happy to compare apples to apples when we can do that, and if you want me to say I was wrong about the Tesla motor size I'm happy to say that I was just going by what was availabl…
> Dropping 10 lbs per motor is HUGE. Auto makers could drop 10lbs, 100lbs or even more from every EV right now by choosing more expensive materials, more expensive manufacturing processes, or simply cutting back on amenities. 10lbs is not significant in the grand scheme of things. The real question is how much it costs, what are the tradeoffs, and how practical is it. > But I did so in service of a point which you st…
10 lbs per motor in an aircraft is huge. And the fact that they can do it WITHOUT having to use more expensive materials or manufacturing or amenities is the thing that is huge about it.
It's a fair take on your responses because talking about a SINGLE motor is missing the point. You're not engaging with the actual point that OP made, you're trying to dispute OP by engaging in your own point about what difference this would make in single-motor cars, instead of what difference it will make in general.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
It drops a buck fifty per motor . That IS a game changer. It can make cars cheaper, or longer range, or faster, or any number of other designs based on what the manufacturer is looking for. But to OP's point about flight - stacking 6 Tesla motors is not an option. Stacking 6 of these YASA motors? Much less weight.
Range in EVs is impacted very little by weight
Exactly. I was very surprised to find out a fully loaded 40 ton electric truck only uses ~100kw / 100km ( https://www.youtube.com/@electrictrucker ) when my 2 ton Volvo averages 20-22kw/100km on road trips.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Dropping 10 lbs per motor is HUGE. Dropping 30 is amazing. Whatever is dropped, it's significant. Pretend that it isn't all you want, but anyone doing production work knows how important this is. I'm happy to compare apples to apples when we can do that, and if you want me to say I was wrong about the Tesla motor size I'm happy to say that I was just going by what was availabl…
> Dropping 10 lbs per motor is HUGE. Auto makers could drop 10lbs, 100lbs or even more from every EV right now by choosing more expensive materials, more expensive manufacturing processes, or simply cutting back on amenities. 10lbs is not significant in the grand scheme of things. The real question is how much it costs, what are the tradeoffs, and how practical is it. > But I did so in service of a point which you st…
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