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Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

media.mercedes-benz.com

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Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#211

Post by pstuart »

tw04 wrote: post #156
originalvichy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. (Edit: My more clarified point is regarding the machinery required + place to accommodate them to work on electric motors vs. ICE metal parts and all the intermediary parts transfering power in the…

>I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. The talent had very little impact to be honest. The primary factor was a government looking 50 years down the road seeing that: 1. ICE engines have little to no long-term future in transportation.…

The current admin is actively hostile to EVs, but I think the real problem was the chicken and egg issue of charging stations: they wouldn't be built because there wasn't enough demand for them and EVs would be limited in sales because they wouldn't have chargers to use on the road.

This is where Tesla made a huge difference with Supercharger stations. I am no fan of Elon, but that work was fundamental in making EVs viable in America.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#212

Post by FabHK »

j_maffe wrote: post #209
ardit33 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number 1 problem is battery weight though. Not electric motors. I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.

I think the cited weight loss comes from energy efficiency gains leading to less battery capacity needed.

Electric engines are already very efficient (particularly compared to internal combustion). If you go from 90% to 95% efficiency, you don't save much in terms of battery.

ETA: Internal combustion engines half a century ago had an efficiency of 20%, now they're at 40%. That cuts the fuel you need to carry in half. Electric engines are near 100%, and as I said, going from 90% to 95% efficiency cuts required battery by a bit more than 5%, so peanuts.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#213

Post by bredren »

johndevor wrote: post #201
mohsen1 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned elsewhere too. This was a one-shot thing that made me wow so I thought I share. You're kind with your comments but others are just hating it, even so I said 1. I don't know this motor technology and 2. It was a one shot experiment If I had time and making a polished web page was my goal I could probably do better but this was not the point!

I made it live and editable here: https://hallway.com/workspaces/f7cfb27c-0a0b-4ca3-9b28-cc7eb...

I asked mythos to make a "The Way Things Work"-inspired version.

Published: https://banagale.com/the-way-the-motor-works/

Source: https://github.com/banagale/the-way-the-motor-works

It lacks cave people but has the woolys.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#214

Post by detritus »

lwhi wrote: post #134
mohsen1 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious how this thing works and asked Claude to visualize it -- mostly to see how good Fable is and I have to say, what it made was good enough for me to get a gist of it. Posted it here https://azimi.me/axial-flux-motor-explainer/

Honestly, I don't think this actually provided much above a paragraph of text. The visuals didn't show much, and I learnt a lot more from one of the YouTube videos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCO633KE7RA ) posted below. It's neat that a whole interactive deck can be produced without effort. But it's just not very interesting.

Yeah, I'm at once awed that something like that can be auto-generated (I presume?) and disappointed that it doesn't usefully or practically improve my understanding, beyond written synopses and human videos, at all.

Stuff like this reminds me that we still need a human in the loop to edit, to improve, to advance.

Auto-from-scratch just doesn't really achieve anything of actual value.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#215

Post by ajross »

pjc50 wrote: post #153
originalvichy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. (Edit: My more clarified point is regarding the machinery required + place to accommodate them to work on electric motors vs. ICE metal parts and all the intermediary parts transfering power in the…

The Chinese EV industry is actually lead by development of batteries , especially CATL. Along with the pack engineering, which is good old Mech.E stuff about heat transfer and physical strength. Secondarily power electronics; at that scale, you can't just pick a bigger transistor and call it a day. By comparison the motors seem to be a mostly solved problem, although I'm sure there's still some scope for power-to-wei…

> The Chinese EV industry is actually lead by development of batteries

This is the core point, but it applies for the whole of the industry. Motors just don't matter. An electric motor is an almost vanishing component of the weight and complexity of an electric vehicle. Cut the mass of the thing *in half* and you're looking at 100kg savings, tops. You could do that with a Model Y by just changing the roof material to something boring and not glass. You could almost do it by shrinking the oversized-as-is-the-fashion wheels.

So... it's great that Mercedez-Benz is producing these, I guess. But it won't make their cars anything more than incrementally better. Which is why we're seeing them crow about it in a press release and not a spec sheet.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#217

Post by SoftTalker »

originalvichy wrote: post #97
miohtama wrote: post #87

Mercedes acquired Yasa (UK) couple of years ago and now getting up to the speed in the production. Here is a nice video that explains axial flux motors with a factory visit https://youtu.be/B2Hl4c1iZK0?si=VfDYARyuaPVj1nKm They are so, so, small.

I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. (Edit: My more clarified point is regarding the machinery required + place to accommodate them to work on electric motors vs. ICE metal parts and all the intermediary parts transfering power in the…

Standing on the shoulders of giants, mainly.

All the industrial processes and machine tool development that happened in the ICE car industry over the last century (and the electronic hardware manufacturing, more recently) was available day one.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#218

Post by gloxkiqcza »

tclancy wrote: post #126
mohsen1 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious how this thing works and asked Claude to visualize it -- mostly to see how good Fable is and I have to say, what it made was good enough for me to get a gist of it. Posted it here https://azimi.me/axial-flux-motor-explainer/

Every plausibly cool electric car innovation leads me to the same thought: “5-10 years from now, the restomod potential will be wild once these come down in cost.” For this, I am imagining retrofitting a Pontiac Fiero to reduce as much weight as possible and see if extended flight becomes possible.

Here’s a build series of an ex-Apple/NASCAR/Tesla engineer turned YouTuber swapping Tesla Model 3 drivetrain to a 50s Jag.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoTU9_iCGa6i_C38pwQyg0pBG...

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#219

Post by SoftTalker »

tw04 wrote: post #156
originalvichy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. (Edit: My more clarified point is regarding the machinery required + place to accommodate them to work on electric motors vs. ICE metal parts and all the intermediary parts transfering power in the…

>I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. The talent had very little impact to be honest. The primary factor was a government looking 50 years down the road seeing that: 1. ICE engines have little to no long-term future in transportation.…

1. There is still no good answer for air transport, trans-oceanic shipping, long-haul trucking, and long-distance rail. ICE will be used there for a good while longer.

Re: Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor

#220

Post by parpfish »

ardit33 wrote: post #198
tclancy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every plausibly cool electric car innovation leads me to the same thought: “5-10 years from now, the restomod potential will be wild once these come down in cost.” For this, I am imagining retrofitting a Pontiac Fiero to reduce as much weight as possible and see if extended flight becomes possible.

Number 1 problem is battery weight though. Not electric motors. I have a 84 w123 300D, and would love to add some more power to it. Lightweight hub motors would be great, but any decent size battery would be at least 200lbs+, which is hard to do on a old chasy.

i know series hybrids aren't as efficient as parallel hybrids (thanks technology connections!), but i wonder if they'd be a good candidate for fun restomods.

drop in a tiny, powerful electric motor and a small battery (crammed in whatever location is best for weight distribution), and then wire up a little genny powered off your existing fuel tank that can jump in as a range extender

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