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Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

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

#381
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the speed of light in football field terms?

Approximately 7 708 937 142 soccer fields per half time.

When using football fields as a unit of length you should use American football fields rather than soccer fields because American football field sizes are more standardized.

For American football professional, college, and high school games are all played on the same sized field, which is 100 years long.

Compare to soccer, where they can even have different sized fields in the same professional league. The English Premier League wants to standardize on 105 m x 68 m but several clubs are still using other sizes: Brentford (105 x 65), Chelsea (103 x 67), Crystal Palace (100 x 67), Everton (103 x 70), Fullham (100 x 65), Liverpool (101 x 68), and Nottingham Forest (105 x 70).

For international play FIFA has a standard, but it is a range: 100-110 m x 64-70 m.

There are parts of a soccer field that are precisely specified and so could be used as a standard of length.

Some examples are the radius of the circle around the center mark (9.144 m), the penalty area (40.23 x 16.46 m), distance from penalty mark to goal (10.97 m), goal area (18.29 m x 5.47 m), distance between goal posts (7.32 m), and the height of the crossbar (2.44 m).

The reason none of them are nice integers is that they were actually originally standardized in Imperial units. In those the aforementioned measurements are 10 yards, 44 yards x 18 yards, 12 yards, 20 yards x 6 yards, 8 yards, and 8 feet, respectively.

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

#382

I wonder if this tech is already being used in F1, or if it makes sense to do so. The weight savings alone could easily make a championship winner.

There have been rumors for quite some time that Mercedes has the best power unit for the upcoming 2026 regulation set. It's entirely possible that this is part of that picture.

"Sustained power output between 350 and 400 kilowatts" is also a bit interesting since that is basically right in line with what people expect out of the 2026 electrical component of the power unit.

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

#383
post #258

This discussion is all about vehicles with large batteries, but how about hybrids? With light enough and efficient enough motors, all kinds of designs might become practical: - Toyota-style hybrid drives could be a lot lighter, and they don’t need large batteries. - e-bikes with tiny batteries? - Hybrid aircraft? What if there was a battery large enough for takeoff and landing, a small motor (or pair for redundancy)…

The size of this motor is moderately interesting, but the power density doesn't really matter for most of the things you just mentioned. Almost every one of them is limited by the amount of batteries you can put in for both weight and power output reasons.

What do you mean? Modern LFP cells have quite high power density. LTO is even higher.

An e-bike with a 100Wh battery and a 300W motor would be extremely useful if it were light enough: you could carry it up stairs, onto trains, etc easily, and it would give plenty of boost to navigate traffic for short distances and make it easier to go up hills. The idea would be that most of the energy would come from the rider. 100Wh of modern LFP cells doesn't weight very much, but you still need to carry around the motor and the structure to support the motor.

In an airplane, you need a lot of power to take off, and weight is a big deal.

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

#384
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight is not the only thing that matters though. You also need to consider center of gravity and wheel base. A YJ Jeep Wrangler and a Honda Fit both weigh around 2700 lbs and they even have similar wheel bases but the driving experience between those 2 is night and day. A Honda Fit can take a turn at speed without feeling like you're going to go flying. You'll feel like you're able to flip making a turn going 20 mph…

You are correct, ideally you would do both. My car is lowered on coilovers, I also have front and rear sway bars, but weight reduction is so much more than just handling. I didn't realize that Jeep was so light... pretty nice actually, but yeah, that's just an application mismatch. People buy Jeeps that will never see even a dirt road in their lives. Then they get on a dirt road once or twice and say, "Look what it c…

The Jeep YJ he is talking about is an 80s design, and some models topped 3200lb by the end of the run. So he is comparing the weight and handling of a car from the 80s to a car from the 2000s at the earliest (although the curb weight he cites means that the fit he is talking about would have to be a later model, from 2015 or later).

The modern Jeep Wrangler, and the one that would be contemporary to the Honda Fit weighs in at 4,000 lbs in the 2-door base model or significantly more depending on options.

If you compare a YJ to a Honda Civic of the same era, you see that the 1986 civic was 1800 lbs up against a 1986 YJ at 2800 lbs.

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

#385
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.

They are not allowed, but still commonly owned and used.

The law needs to catch up. There are clearly good reasons for people to want extremely powerful e-bikes and they should be allowed to. They can't be treated like bicycles because they're too fast but aren't nearly as dangerous as motorcycles. We need a new category for light motorcycles.

The real problem, IMO, is that the law is generally not deferential enough to cyclists and already forces them off sidewalks, onto the street, and to follow traffic laws designed for cars. There's not much else to take away, and the rules right now are unreasonable enough that cyclists always break them.

I think what I would like to see are explicit requirements for insurance and licensing for powerful e-bikes, but made significantly cheaper so that people will actually bother. Requiring helmets for the insurance would also make it much more straightforward. We can require them to take the street or a dedicated bike lane and fully mandate that they have to be walked on sidewalks.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Listen, your world may not allow you to sell an e-bike with a 1000hp motor on it. But my world allows me to put a 1000hp motor on an e-bike and not tell anyone. Now hold my beer...

There's a difference.

I've noticed that people seem to believe as long as they bought something it should be safe. If you're smart enough to build something, I have to hope you're at least smart enough to realize that there might be consequences.

Take your beer back, I'm going for a rip next.

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

#387
post #20

The new YASA axial flux motor weighs just 28 pounds, or about the same as a small dog. But how many footballs a small dog weighs?

Not sure about footballs but 28 pounds is about the weight of a child, a bag of rice, or a dumbbell. Hope that helps!

Ah, the weight of a dumbbell, so between 1 and 40 kg.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. EV motors are already lightweight. The electric motor in a vehicle like a Tesla Model 3 already weighs less than you do. Reducing that one component by 75% would be a weight savings equivalent to about a half of a passenger. Not a significant effic…

I would expect that lighter motor components would potentially allow weight reduction in load bearing components. Not an advantage for SUV-type cars, but for light and ultralight vehicles it could add up to more weight saving and longer ranges.

You still have to handle the torque of the smaller motor. 30kg is maybe 2% of the vehicle weight.

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

#389
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…

> 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. EV motors are already lightweight. The electric motor in a vehicle like a Tesla Model 3 already weighs less than you do. Reducing that one component by 75% would be a weight savings equivalent to about a half of a passenger. Not a significant effic…

Exactly. Main problem is battery energy density. Cars can drive about 20 kilometers on 1 liter of gasoline. In comparison, Tesla's 4680 cells are at about 272-296 Wh/kg and CATL's Kirin Battery at about 255 Wh/kg. A bit efficient EV often uses 200 Wh/km, so for 1 kg of battery the electric vehicle can only reach 1-2 km. An order of magnitude difference. Theoretically, batteries could go to 1000 Wh/kg some day, which would mean about 5 km per 1 kg of battery assuming all else remains equal.

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

#390
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…

Kids these days
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