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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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A stored program computer, that is a device which can run arbitrary programs from storage, is a pretty rigorously defined thing. Like, we all have a pretty clear shared understanding that things like FPGAs and microcontrollers are computers, whereas you can have integrated circuits which don't have these capabilities.

To be clear, I don't think making elaborate analog ICs would be really "cheating" so long as they don't put a generic von Neumann machine on it.

EDIT: to be more clear, what I'd be trying to achieve with a rule change like this is making "computation" a somewhat larger investment in time and difficulty. By and large, at least in my opinion, profligate, non-essential computation has enabled many of the things that have made the sport less interesting. It's also made cars suck a lot. This would impose kind of a tax on those things.

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

#312

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.

Unsprung mass is a concern, though, and being able to put motors in the wheel has benefits.

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

#313
post #202

For family cars we need 4x 30-50 hp units. If the motor can weigh around 7 kg it can be placed directly on wheel. Adding durable brake discs (rarely used) and 2 inverters front ad back and we have the EV platform of the next 100 years

do we need disk brakes?

Some EV models have gone back to drum brakes. The main drawback of drum brakes is overheating, which is why they can’t be used for performance vehicles, even though drum brakes can deliver more braking power. EVs with strong regenerative braking reduces pressure on the brakes, making the heat build-up less of a problem.

The main advantage of this is cost, not weight or performance, but it does show that EVs have different profile to ICE cars.

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

#314
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.

This is happening now in the openinverter.org community

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

#315
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don’t think there’s a whole lot of room for improvement there.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great video! So it looks like axial flux, the OG was introduced in 1820 something and it wasn't easy to manufacture. So radio flux came after that and has been around ever since. So axial flux is making its come back this year! The video is very interesting too about decompounding returns when the motor is less with the other things need to weigh less too. Especially the bit about potentially not needing brakes in th…

Also found it fascinating, although on the discussion about brakes I thought about how regen braking turns off in my EV when the battery is full, because there is no where to put the power. So you either keep some of the battery always available to soak up braking energy (and hope people never charge to full at the top of a mountain and exhaust the buffer) or you include a set of normal brakes for when regen is not p…

Or you could dump the power into a realllly loud horn

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

#317
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a V12 or V16, thank you very much.

I'd like a 600 HP 1.5l supercharged V16 - doesn't even need to be in a car, mainly just to listen to! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16

I’d opt for the V10 from the F2004 Ferrari F1 car if I had to pick an engine to listen to, it’s what a race car should sound like. There’s just something about a V10, it sounds musical.

https://youtu.be/gLyqoX3LZrk

That BRM V16 is a close second though! It’s probably more impressive given it’s 50 years older than the Ferrari engine and was not designed by computers.

https://youtu.be/A4w22LJrLeU

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

#318
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like a 600 HP 1.5l supercharged V16 - doesn't even need to be in a car, mainly just to listen to! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16

If the displacement isn’t measured in cubic meters, can you even call it an engine?

If it doesn’t make at least 200kW per cylinder, can the engine even do any real work?

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

#319
post #239

I wonder, is axial flux motor as cool sci-fi sounding in German as it is in english?

Probably not, it is called „Axialflussmotor“ which is a literal translation. According to wikipedia, it is also called „Scheibenläufermotor“, but I‘ve only ever encountered the literal translation being used (but also not an engineer)

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

#320
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it was also so sad to lose the vintage brain damage when we migrated away from leaded fuels: https://dupri.duke.edu/news-events/news/20th-century-lead-ex...

wtf are you talking about? I drive one of these cars every day (that I need to drive, which isn’t that often really) without leaded gasoline. It’s the punchy little m10 motor, 4 speed transmission, and incredibly low curb weight that make these cars fun to drive. You lose all that with an electric conversion. As an aside, the most powerful F1 engine ever put on the track was made by modifying the little 4-banger m10…

I'm pretty sure the subtext of that comment was that the benefit of electric motors in retro cars is the emission reduction (and possibly cost and maintenance reduction), and not improved specs/experience. Saying "ye but it worsens the experience" misses the point.
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