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

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

#301

Post by noshitsherlock »

bredren wrote: post #263
isaacaggrey wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very neat. Thank you for sharing! I assume this was one shot as well -what sort of prompt did you use? I’m sure folks would be interested even in a blog post comparing just this process with different Anthropic models if that’s something you do and need a content idea. :)

Here's the prompt I used: --- Can you make a version of this that is more in the style of "the way things work" the cool inventions book from the 90s with cavepeople and wooly mamoths and that illustration asthetic? https://github.com/mohsen1/axial-flux-motor-explainer If able, expand on the abilities of the page as requested in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475428 --- So ya, that was a one shot…

Wow, crazy man, crazy!

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

#302

Post by xethos »

dotancohen wrote: post #289
N1H1L wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. The CdA (coefficient of drag multiplied by frontal area) matters far more for range than the weight for range. That is a smaller EV, which may very well be heavier can have a higher range and efficiency.

The Cd matters for highway driving, but weight is the dominating factor for city driving.

As efficiency improves across motors and inverters, wouldn't regen make CoD matter more, possibly tilting it to the dominant factor again?

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

#303

Post by rsamtravis »

I know what a "motor" is and I know what "electric" means but I have no idea what an "electric axial flux motor" is. I'm pretty sure it's not what Doc Brown used to travel through time but it could be.

About once a week I think I'm too dumb to be on this site and today is that day. Off to duckduckgo to do some research.

Edit: it's actually pretty simple. Here is the wikipedia on them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_flux_motor

It could use some more diagrams, but it makes the gist of it pretty simple to understand.

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

#306

Post by bityard »

jcgrillo wrote: post #274
jcgrillo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can't run a direct injection gas engine without a digital engine control unit, because the injection timings are much to precise to do mechanically. This is not accurate, the first production direct injection gasoline automotive engine was in the 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL. It's true, you probably won't be running piezoelectric injectors without computer controls, but there's nothing preventing direct injection. But…

To phrase it maybe a little more provocatively: how would you accomplish the precise timing necessary to achieve spherical implosion? This was possible with analog electronics in 1945. Surely in 2026 we can also build analog piezoelectric fuel injection systems.

To play devil's advocate, this starts to get into the territory of, how do you define a computer? If the analog circuitry is using sensors and passive components to inject fuel at spark at just the right time under varying conditions, "computing" them, one might say...

Maybe "no integrated circuits" might be a finer line.

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

#307

Post by dieselgate »

kpil wrote: post #279
serf wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its less hard than you'd think unless you're really going for long range. for my sailboat I am getting rid of a 300lbs diesel and a 30gallon fuel tank with a 45lbs PMAC. That means I have opened up about 465lbs for batteries. Now, with a sailboat you're never truly out of range -- but the point stands : these things are so much lighter than ICEs on average that there is a lot of opportunity even with battery weight a…

I guess there's always the risk for a rig failure. I looked a bit on doing the same, but came to the conclusion that it will be expensive to fulfil racing rules requiring the boat to be able to maintain speed for 5 hours ie around 25-30 NM range. As it is now, I have about 500 NM diesel range on my boat, which is basically 3-4 days continuous runtime. Cutting it down to 25nm and 5 hours requires minimally 100kWh. For…

> there's always the risk for a rig failure.

Don't forget rudder and keel - especially if sailing off the coast of western europe...

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

#308

Post by dieselgate »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #288
serf wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its less hard than you'd think unless you're really going for long range. for my sailboat I am getting rid of a 300lbs diesel and a 30gallon fuel tank with a 45lbs PMAC. That means I have opened up about 465lbs for batteries. Now, with a sailboat you're never truly out of range -- but the point stands : these things are so much lighter than ICEs on average that there is a lot of opportunity even with battery weight a…

This is silly, but I've also wondered if you could make a boat that can anchor and recharge batteries from ambient current, sort of like stationary regenerative braking. I'm sure it would take way too long to be worth it, but it was a fun idle thought.

Perhaps the paddle wheel[0] will interest you, the spinning is used to calculate the velocity of the boat. Probably some other propeller or similar would be more practical - like a kicker motor that's easily lowered over the side. Just spitballing. I don't think it'd be worth it considering solar options. Even wind generators are not "super efficient" in comparison but I don't have data.

[0] https://www.westmarine.com/bg-h3000-paddlewheel-sensor-w-pla...

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

#309

Post by henrikschroder »

pstuart wrote: post #211
tw04 wrote: post #156

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. 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…

Nevertheless, there seems to be zero buy-in from commercial players in the US. It's such a weird uphill battle.

I live in the US, but every summer I spend a month in Sweden, and the past two years I've rented EVs for the entire stay, and the buildout of chargers these past 4-5 years has been astonishing. It's gone from crap to fantastic in a very short time, and that's without massive government intervention or subsidies or screaming and cajoling.

Because in Sweden, the primary driver of charging stops along highways and in the cities are gas stations.

They already make all their profit from incidental purchases and not the gas itself, so them pivoting to EV charging stops makes perfect sense. They already have the infrastructure in place to sell you overpriced hotdogs and coffee and snacks for your road trip, they already have restrooms in place.

But they also do the same in the cities, it seems like every city gas station has also put up a couple of 350W charging stations. It's not half-assed, they mean business. They all see the writing on the wall, in neighbouring Norway EV's are 90+% of all new car sales, Sweden is at ~30% right now, and climbing, so gas stations will go out of business if they don't pivot to EV charging.

It's fundamental market economy forces at work, the kind of stuff that the US normally prides itself of.

So why is that not happening in the US?

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

#310

Post by OkayPhysicist »

testing22321 wrote: post #293
SoftTalker wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you stop then if the batteries are (close to) fully charged? You'd need to shunt that power into a big resistive load, and then dump that heat.

I’ve long wondered why we don’t ditch the friction brakes. Just have the battery stop charging and report 100% full when it’s only 98% (or whatever) so there is enough capacity for some solid emergency stops in the first few minutes of driving. Even if you have to resort to the resistor, who cares? It’s not like this is a common scenario

That's fine, until someone charges their cabin up in Truckee and decides to drive down 80 to the central valley (a hour or so drive you can do in neutral).

Regenerative braking also loses a lot of its stopping power at slow speeds. Going from "slowly rolling forward" to "full stopped" takes a lot longer than the instantaneous it is with friction brakes.

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