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Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

supercarblondie.com

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Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#371
post #6

Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's, because 1/4 of the motor weight means better power-to-weight ratio... a lot of things will automatically get better. YASA was founded in 2009, a spin out from Oxford University following the PhD of founder and still CTO, Dr Tim Woolmer. "Over the decades that followed both of these technologies were explored. But despite the potential for weight reduction, smaller…

It will probably lead to cars that fail sooner and are cheaper to build

Okay cool downvote me but it's true, most of the weight is batteries and asking a smaller device to do more work will create more heat and wear components faster. It's not a new phenomenon.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Superfastmatt did a test recently where he proved to himself that the front area of the vehicle and trailer is the dominant factor on mileage, not the weight towed or friction.

For a guy trying to drive 300 mph though maybe he should have been able to do that with math instead of sketchy road tests.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big issue in the US currently with people buying electric motorcycles that look like e-bikes.

What is the issue? I've seen people on those bikes and they look fun to ride.

I see kids blasting around at high speeds without helmets.

Kids treat them like fast bikes you do not have to pedal. Wiping out on a bike at 13mph is a very different proposition to wiping out on a bike at higher speeds.

I saw just a couple nights ago some kid doing what appeared to be about 40mph on an eBike. Wind in his hair, not pedaling, just blasting it. I am sure new regulations will come to speed limit them, but at the cost of dead and disabled young people.

ETA: I went to go look up laws requiring speed limiters on bikes, and the top hit was about how you can disable them:

https://goebikelife.com/how-to-remove-ebike-speed-limiter/

Article states typical eBike speed limiters are 20-28mph. That is the kind of sustained speed Olympic cyclists can maintain for some period of time, and much faster than kid's toys need to be capable of. And these are the mandated limiters!

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#376
post #315
post #221

Earlier 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…

Yup, it's an arms race to see who can buy the biggest vehicle so that they can see over the second biggest vehicle and survive a collision with it. But small cars are only unsafe because of that discrepancy between the largest and smallest cars, and it's not just weight, but height difference. It's possible to survive crashes at very extreme speeds in very light cars if they are designed to work that way (see: F1 cra…

And that’s why any vehicle over 2 tons should require a commercial driver’s license. Let plumbers and tree removal services drive them and not 19 year olds whose parents want their child to survive a fatal crash at the expense of everyone else in a twenty foot radius of the wreck.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#377
post #221

Earlier 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…

Your intuition is correct. Americans’ Love Affair with Big Cars is Killing Them ( https://www.economist.com/interactive/united-states/2024/08/... ) - The Economist. > In a crash, the fatality rate of the occupants of the heavy pickup truck is about half that of the compact car. But they are also far more dangerous to the fatality rate of people in other cars. > The fatality rate is roughly seven times higher when col…

Well, hood and grill shapes are mandated for pedestrian safety but everyone else is fucked.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#378
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, or a miniaturized version thereof could change the game for light electric vehicles - imagine an electric motorcycle that weighs substantially more like an electric bicycle. Right now it takes about 10-15lbs of motor to produce a 3KW motor for an electric bike, this motor is about 10 times that in power density afaict. The Livewire electric motorcycles use something like 100-200 lbs of motor to produce 1/4 as m…

There’s no area in the world that allows e-bikes with more than 750w motors. A 3kw motor is illegal (cf Surron), unless you are talking about an e-moped requiring registration.

He said motorcycle. That's a market of hundreds of millions to one billion customers.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#379
post #221

Earlier 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?

It’s going to have to be sorted at the DMV.

You take a defensive driving course, I’ll let you drive a tank down the road. But my neighbor’s kids should not be behind the wheel of a death dealer. Those vehicles were meant for skilled laborers, not Sally who is on her phone while driving.

Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

#380
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the issue? I've seen people on those bikes and they look fun to ride.

I see kids blasting around at high speeds without helmets. Kids treat them like fast bikes you do not have to pedal. Wiping out on a bike at 13mph is a very different proposition to wiping out on a bike at higher speeds. I saw just a couple nights ago some kid doing what appeared to be about 40mph on an eBike. Wind in his hair, not pedaling, just blasting it. I am sure new regulations will come to speed limit them, b…

And here is the problem. They are already supposed to be speed limited if it's an e-bike. It's easy to tell the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle, but the difference between an e-bike and electric motorcycle is far more subtle. And most electric motorcycles lie and market themselves as e-bikes.
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