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Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

bloomberg.com

91–100 of 283 posts

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#91
post #48

While I like the technology aspect, I am secretly rooting for expensive cars to become uncool. Small boring self-driving cars, possibly collectively owned instead of big expensive individually owned cars often used as a proof of social status.

expensive cars are already uncool. except amongst oligarchs I don't think many would profess their love of car interiors from like.. Bentley and it's hand stitched unashamed whole piece leather interior? or the busyness of Porsche and it's thousand button centre console. It's all just so excessive, and excess is definitely uncool nowadays

I profess that I like nice things, and buttons inside cars.

If anything is excessive in modern cars, it's the size and amount of touchscreens, not the amount of buttons.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#92
post #80
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Tesla doesn’t offer LiDAR sensors, even if it’s clearly the best technology to use for the autopilot.

Not even close. Psuedo-LiDAR approach is the way to go and everyone knows it. Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it.

> Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it.

Waymo launched their commercial robo-taxi service in 2017. It’s still running today. Open to the public [1].

Meanwhile, Tesla is phasing out their FSD program. Beta-testers, 98 safety score, $15K cost, whatever, current Tesla owners are pissed off.

FSD is a sinking ship, just like the Tesla/Elon brand. They used to be cool.

[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/04/...

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#93
post #80
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Tesla doesn’t offer LiDAR sensors, even if it’s clearly the best technology to use for the autopilot.

Not even close. Psuedo-LiDAR approach is the way to go and everyone knows it. Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it.

Waymo hasn't killed anyone yet. I think that is probably the most important thing to show.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#94
post #87
post #36

The perspective of this piece is a little suspicious: -ferrari still maintain that they will never produce electric cars -the concept of hub motors is a fad that has come and largely gone. Putting the motors inside the wheels leads to reliability concerns -motors with smaller diameter will need more power for the same performance of a larger diameter motor, and the battery is the heavy part Normally each of these i'd…

“ICE propaganda” is something that I would actively follow and support, I’d even put my vote for a political platform that would have it front and center. Unfortunately this article was nothing of the sorts, as the future of vehicle transportation doesn’t depend on its luxury makers.

Honestly why stop there? I'm big on the Fred Flintstones foot-driven model. I'd even put my vote behind a political platform that has it front and center.

I think cars make the world worse, but to the extent that we have them electric cars are significantly better than ICE cars in basically every way. I want less cars, but until then, they should be electric. Efficiency is higher, torque off the line is significantly better, carbon footprint is lower, they're way more fun to drive and significantly simpler from a mechanical perspective. What's not to like?

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#95
post #4

> Putting a motor on each wheel — or at least one on each axle — could translate into hair-raising EV driving performance. I don't understand this. My Plaid Tesla has a motor on each of the rear axles, and it's direct coupled to the wheel. The already are doing torque vectoring. Like all things in engineering, the trade-off's are critical. This article doesn't go at all into the pros/cons of the approach Tesla (and o…

The Pros are volume and weight and the con is probably primarily price. Lower weight and volume means you have a lot more options on where they go and where you can put batteries that you couldn't before. In the article they mentioned the Koenegsegg Regera which is a perfect example of where this motor works well. A two-seater with an 1100HP V8 and 9kWh of battery that also needs world class handling makes weight and…

I don't think they're building the roadster in any capacity - at least haven't seen any evidence of that. What makes you think so?

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#96
Isn't this more about economically producing low-volume motors, than about designing in-wheel motors? Production process seen in the video looks way simpler, requiring far less jigs and process adjustments compared to more typical EV motors.

I don't see Ferrari or performance cars divisions of Mercedes suddenly starting to ship 500hp motors at 10k units/year volume, so the production process would have to adjust according to their volumes, and to me this design seem to do just that.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#97
> All EVs offer the sensation of instant acceleration

...but of course luxury brands will happily charge you ten times more for that little bit of extra acceleration. Which also ensures future noob owners of Ferraris will keep crashing their eye-wateringly expensive cars (hopefully not causing others to get hurt in the process).

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ultra-rich "experts" I don’t think climatologists are in the pay grade to afford super yachts

I'm talking about experts on how we should live and structure society as a whole. Climate science is one tiny part of that calculus. And no climate scientist has told me I should lock myself in my house and eat cockroaches while they gallivant in their private jets from mansion to mansion and gorge themselves on quail tongues and sturgeon eggs. EDIT: I didn't mean to say climate change is not happening or having nega…

> With such renown and respected experts as Gore, Obama, Trudeau, Gates, and DiCaprio as my guiding stars on this matter, it's clear that the experts are firmly on my side, and anybody saying otherwise is a dangerous extremist denier.

I think a big flaw in your thinking is that for these people climate change won't have big consequences equals in climate change won't have big consequences for you. They can pay there way around the negative effects by e.g. buying another house somewhere more habitable, paying security personal to protect from looters or pay high prices for goods. You probably can't. The people you named are aware of the consequences for the ordinary people and that's why they are raising there voice but they are not directly affected that's why they are only raising there voices and take less action.

You on the other hand should do both, raise your voice and demand action as well as take action yourself by limiting your negative impact where its easiest (which apparently you started to do already) and don't wait for the upper class to change.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#99
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mercedes 300SL, the Gull Wing of 1954, already had inboard-mounted brakes to reduce unpsrung weight. I would assume that any Mercedes engineer would be familiar with the concept...

As do the Jaguar E and XJ types, and perhaps other Jags. The Audi 100, some Alfas and Lotus cars, too.

And the Humvee

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#100
post #80
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Tesla doesn’t offer LiDAR sensors, even if it’s clearly the best technology to use for the autopilot.

Not even close. Psuedo-LiDAR approach is the way to go and everyone knows it. Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it.

I hope you’re not biased since you work for Tesla’s autopilot BU. Anyway I’m no expert and I’m open to learn something. With pseudo-LiDAR do you mean photogrammetry? Following your input I may say the best approach could be then to integrate both image and LiDAR technologies to create the most trustable 3d scan. Since LiDAR measures space and distance, it can correct the other photography sensors which could be prone to some errors. I understand the cost side of scale manufacturing but you cannot cut cost in this case, the risk of fatal injuries it’s too big. Also I feel Elon decided ‘dogmatically’ to avoid LiDARs and that’s why this is the only road you are considering…
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