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Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

supercarblondie.com

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

#531

Post by inasio »

Aurornis wrote: post #251
davedx wrote: 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…

Basically Amdahl's law [0]. If optimizing for weight, go for the components that make up most of the weight first.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

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

#532

Post by Dylan16807 »

catapart wrote: post #487
Dylan16807 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 lbs per motor in an aircraft is huge. That's cool but the conversation was about cars. It's a welcome but tiny improvement for cars. Even after you multiply by 2 or 4, especially because the more motors a car has the smaller they are.

No, it's literally - by the discussion partner's own estimation[0] - cutting the motor size in half. That's not a tiny improvement, it's a half-weight reduction for the motor. It's not as big as I naively estimated from a google search, but it's still half the weight. That's the kind of thing engineers chase as a benchmark and rarely every actually achieve. It's great. But also, I reject your attempt to reframe the d…

> But also, I reject your attempt to reframe the discussion as strictly car focused. OP specifically mentioned flight. Which doesn't necessarily mean it was all about aircraft - the article is about cars after all. But it certainly doesn't mean that the conversation was strictly about cars, either.

OP mentioned flight. But the part that got argued back and forth over the next 7 comments was about EVs. Aurornis never said a word about anything but EVs.

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

#533

Post by Dylan16807 »

ac29 wrote: post #527
fukka42 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said supermarkets, not grocery stores. I acknowledge they're not the same thing, but Walmart absolutely is a supermarket. And I'll pass on visiting the US why y'all have armed police running around tackling people & disappearing them, and are demanding social media passwords only to refuse entry if you've been critical of Dear Leader. Sort your shit out, then maybe.

Supermarket and grocery store are basically synonyms in the US. Walmart would be called a superstore or box store.

I agree with your first statement, but I'd point it the other way around. I often call big supermarkets grocery stores even when I shouldn't. And I never use "superstore" or "box store".

I'm fine calling walmart a supermarket.

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

#534

Post by [deleted] »

conductr wrote: post #434
RajT88 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAmericans/comments/184oag8/can_y... That assertion seems to be a disconnect of language. But - Selling firearms in Wal-Mart is bad enough, but it does tend to be more rural Wal-Marts than suburban (and not at all urban). Said firearms are under lock and key in the same way they would be at gun stores. There are many gun shops in the same areas where Wal-Mart sells firearms. A…

> All bets are off for Texas. We have everything locked up too just as you describe. We just have a lot of places to buy them, it's not like Wal-Mart here has a bin in the middle of the isle full of AR's next to the bin of Pokemon stuffies. Only pellet and BB guns are found on the shelf. I don't know why I'm being pedantic, guns here are insane for many reasons but not because of this one. What bothers me is once you…

[deleted]

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

#535

Post by neuroelectron »

gwbas1c wrote: post #300
neuroelectron wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really easy to forget?

People used to say they would only get a Tesla if it was offered with a manual transmission. It's easy to laugh at, but there are still many people who haven't shifted, in their mind, to the differences. Even after driving EVs for over a decade, I still need to shift. My habit is to turn the car off and close the garage inside the car. My new EV only controls the garage if it's on, so I had to get used to closing the…

I switch between manual and automatic cars pretty easily and I would definitely notice that my car weighs two and a half tons while driving it.

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

#536

Post by loeg »

jacquesm wrote: post #501
loeg wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for electric motorcycles is the battery weight.

Indeed, more so because that weight tends to be further off the ground than in a car.

Well, and the fun ones are power-to-weight monsters. Making them 100 lb heavier (and neutering range) is a recipe for a less exciting motorcycle. Might work for something like a Gold Wing (though limited range would also be a problem there).

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

#537

Post by elguyosupremo »

electrograv wrote: post #238
davedx wrote: 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…

> In 2025, after a £12m investment, YASA opened the UK's first axial-flux super factory, in Oxfordshire. It’s a little sad to me that fundamental innovations in electromechanical engineering like this get just a few million in investment, yet if this had been yet another derivative software startup with “AI” in the pitch, they’d probably have 10x+ or more investments being thrown at them.

They're owned by Mercedes, I'm sure they probably have access to the capital they need.

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

#538

Post by binary132 »

acac10 wrote: post #240
binary132 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my first thought was racing EUC’s, lol….

End User Credentials ? Everyone Uses Cars ? Engineered Universal Conscience? (Since you seem to assume we all share your thoughts & context...)

E-UniCycles are mentioned in gp. It’s a common initialism for them.

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

#539

Post by bigiain »

loeg wrote: post #481
Empact wrote: 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…

The problem for electric motorcycles is the battery weight.

That can be offset by not requiring the same sort of range that's typically assumed to be required.

While I'll be likely be riding my ICE bikes for decades because one of the things I do on them is trips with 1000 or 1500km days, truth is the vast majority of my riding is sub 25km round trips from my place. Most of my friends places, a lot of the places I shop or socialise, and the office (which I pretty much never go to any more) fit inside that range. And most of those trips take place on roads with a 60kmh or slower speed limit. _Maybe_ a few short sections of 80kmh.

For all of those short trips, I probably don't even need 2kWHr worth of battery, maybe only 1. The electric motorcycles available around here seem to start at 7 or 8kWHr, and go up to over 20.

The downside to that is the smaller the battery capacity, the smaller the short term peak power it can deliver. The sort of cell chemistry and construction typical in those sort of bikes seem to be limited to 10 or 15C peak discharge, so while their 8kWHr battery can peak at 80kW or just over 100hp, if they downsized the same pack to 1kWHr it'd probably only deliver 10kW peak power.

On the other had, alternative cell chemistry and construction can look way better. I have a few LiPo drone battery packs rated at 60C continuous and 120C peak. A 2kWHr pack of those would give me 120kW continuous and 240kW peaks. Quite likely though at the expense of much greater risks of catastrophic fire. I've had a few of those pack catch fire while charging and one that self combusted in an almost explosion like fashion when I slammed the drone into a concrete pole at about 120kmh. I can totally see why an electric motorcycle manufacturer with warranties and safety reputation and legal/regulatory obligations wouldn't want to accept that risk.

I'd love an electric motorcycle that's "fun" enough to ride, and gets 25km or so reliable range. But it'd need to be at least a bit price and "fun" competitive with my little bikes, a 117kg 125cc ~25kW two stroke and a 138kg 250cc 24kW fourstroke. I have no doubt it'd be possible, perhaps even easy to build an electric bike with the same "fun" power to weight ratio, but right now not down to the sort of price that'd make me take on a project like that.

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

#540

Post by jlarocco »

lelandbatey wrote: post #526
jlarocco wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but aren't nearly as dangerous as motorcycles. What a ridiculous statement. I don't think there's any inherrent difference, but until the laws catch up the "powerful e-bikes" are clearly more dangerous. Riding a traditional motorcycle requires a license, passing a driving test, and following the rules of the road - none of which are true for e-bikes. But I'd love to hear why you think the opposite.

An ebike weighs less than a motorcycle by at least half (for super lightweight motorcycles) or less than 1/6th the weight. So a fast ebike is about as dangerous as merely the human person +100lbs traveling at speed. Thus, less energy to transmit to a pedestrian

100 pounds of bike plus 150 pounds of person hitting a pedestrian at 30+ mph is still going to do cause serious injuries to both of them.

But it's really a moot point because there are essentially zero motorocycles travelling on sidewalks, bikepaths, and trails where pedestrians are going to be concentrated, while it's a free for all for e-bikes.

In general, motorcycle/pedestrian accidents are pretty rare. Statistically, motorcyclists are most likely to injure or kill themselves rather than bystanders.

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