Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea that's the thing right, the battery is so very much of the weight that optimizing the other parts are "meh" at this point. What is cool is that the 600Wh/kg solid state batteries seems like they are really finally here soon :) i.e removing 200-300kg from a car in one go will be a game changer.
Manufacturers may just keep the battery size and market the improved range instead? Smaller cars in urban and suburban environments have always had lots of benefits, but since many of them are collective in nature, it has largely fallen on tragedy of the commons, and we got larger cars with larger hoods instead.
Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
511–520 of 616 posts
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#512Earlier 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…
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish more people on the road realized the extent to which weight reduction improves all aspects of the driving experience... it really does compound unlike any other change that you can make to a vehicle. IMO heavy vehicles are a scam and the antithesis of the direction we should be moving.
It's ~all battery weight, though. This doesn't really move the needle.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#514Could 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…
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#515Could 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…
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
If engine can be produced cheaply, can it be limited "in software"? It's like saying people shouldn't use Rasberry Pi to blink an LED.
Yeah, you kind of shouldn't use a Raspberry Pi to blink an LED, though. Great "Hello World" project. But there are so many ways that are cheaper, lighter, smaller and more reliable (and don't require a lengthy boot-up).
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I'm not so sure about that. I don't want a 6000kw Sur Ron riding in the bike lane with me. The whole point of the bike lane was to make a safe space for riding a bicycle. I want the bike lanes to be safe enough for children to ride their bikes in, and having something that powerful…
I think what they mean is these e-bikes pushing 60mph should be legal but reclassified as something closer to a motorcycle. The problem with keeping them illegal is people tend to treat them like bikes when they should be on the road.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#518Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a game changer but I wonder if ligher motors allow you to do things like have one motor per drive wheel, removing the need for differential gearboxes? Then you can do clever things with traction control without having to use the ABS system to brake the drive wheels. Or dramatically change the turning circle on big cars and vans. Maybe even reduce the size and weight of the braking system by taking on some of that…
Putting the motors in the wheel is bad for a separate reason: Unsprung weight. Every ounce you have in the hubs that don't float on the suspension reduces certain suspension attributes. You end up with a crappier ride and poor performance.
Re: Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the motors are light enough, though, that might be acceptable... especially if they can make an even smaller version for that application. (You probably don't need 750 kW on each wheel - even for a supercar that'd be excessive.)
fwiw four of those electric motors is approximately 4,000 hp. You won't get better 0-60 times with that though, at that point, you're limited by the tires' physical limitations. So at best you could get down to a ~2.2 second 0-60 mph time with regular tires, and then after that, you'd need race sticky tires in order to go faster. Unless you used the motors to power fans instead, then you could use that for downforce…