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I'm not going to say you're wrong, just that it's getting awfully tangential.

Maybe we can agree that the efficiency attracted traffic, but the efficiency wasn't properly computed in the first place? I understand the finance pukes use the term "externalities." If more of the subsequent and consequential costs had been included, the efficiency quotient wouldn't have ever looked good enough to the crowd.

 

All that and more would be be easily fundable if we seized the assets of all the world's billionaires and negotiated peace treaties with every nation to protect sovereignty and eliminate all war, as well as most all private property rights.

A democratically-based socialized global economy where no one has too little and no one has too much would solve almost all our problems. But instead we have a capitalist economy controlled by the most corrupt and greedy and immoral among us and has made our gobal trajectory a suicidal one for all life on earth.

 

actually - they're w/in 70 miles of most major areas - and plans are quickly filling in the gaps. But for some - that's not good enough yet. And that's okay. If demand for Tesla was higher, they could command a higher price so I would respectfully suggest to let it go. EV's don't need more converts .... especially if drivers are traveling to the middle of the Outback, or the Plains of the Dakotas, or the Yukon Highway & the like .... & they don't have a 2nd/long haul gasser. For now - builders got their hands full with building more & more factories ....
Tesla set to begin deliveries of China-made Model 3 cars on Dec. 30 (that's today!)
as well as lots of QC pit stops .... & repair centers. Patience!
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Plus the nav, which hasn't entered the conversation yet (in this thread anyways) and probably shouldn't until - oooops sorry bout that !

 

if the best they can come up with is 360 degree donuts in the mud, it should be a redneck hit!

 

Yeah but how do they coal-roll Priuses?


iPad ? Pro

 

Was that the 'questionable vehicle'? <grins>

Once it is listed in the EPA database, I'll have a technical opinion.

Bob Wilson

 

yep ~ the EV road to success is strewn with good ideas, Tech wonders, & great intentions.


Only one car company out of dozens of auto startup attempts has actually made it over the last ½ century+. Who would ever guess it would be Electric. Now, everybody wants to be the next Henry Ford ..... or should we say Elon Musk.
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What makes the ride rough with hub motors, the weight, also reduces the vehicle's efficiency. Adding weight to the wheel is the worse place to add it for performance and efficiency.

Hub motors also cost more, as it isn't as easy to cool them, which thus requires magnets with a higher amount of rare earth elements in the mix. On a small car or motorcycle, they can be a solution to finding space for the battery. On something the size of a pick up, that isn't an issue. Four body mounted motors will give you all the benefits of hub motors, without the drawbacks, for lower cost.

When the Prius first came out, full strength, parallel hybrids that people would buy weren't technically possible. Now that is what most new hybrids are. All else being equal, they should be cheaper than the power-split system in the Prius.

The cost for batteries is still dropping, and BEVs using smaller motors paired with a multispeed transmission will eventually come along. So affordable BEV of enough range will come along. For those for which those still aren't enough range, PHEVs using carbon neutral fuels will become a thing.

 

I can't see any reason to ever do that. There are so many ways to solve that problem without a mechanical means of changing ratios.

 

I got coal rolled in my Tesla the other day. Have dash cam video showing how dangerous it was reducing visibility. Christmas morning too. What a nice guy. Too bad the authorities in our state could care less.

 

Wouldn't it let you use a smaller motor without having to do something exotic for that motor's main shaft bearings?

It does seem a bit counterintuitive, but if a suitable transmission is already in production, I could see this strategy reducing the net cost of the product.

 

One of Volvo's commercial truck BEVs uses a conventional transmission, and one or two auto part suppliers are working on a BEV specific transmission. Many a past EV conversion was a DC motor bolted onto the factory manual transmission. A DC motor could save costs in the power control unit of the car.

Just found this, GKN eTwinster BEV e-axle debut
"The new 2-speed “seamless shift” eTransmission has the potential to extend vehicle range while also providing increased torque for improved acceleration and a higher top speed, all while using smaller electric motors. Efficiency and further powertrain downsizing are enhanced by the eTwinster’s coaxial layout, while improved stability and dynamic performance are possible thanks to its torque-vectoring capabilities."

 

I don't see how.

I can't see it doing anything but increasing the cost. You're adding an entirely unneeded component.

The Prius Prime has relatively tiny motors, and even those are fixed ratio relative to the wheels when in Ev mode, and they propel the car just fine over its normal operating range. Electric motors simply have such a wide constant-torque mode followed by a very-wide constant-power mode that there's very little reason to change things over the range of speeds normally seen on a car. Add to that the relatively-low voltages these motors run at and you almost never have to worry about insulation breakdown or end-turn arcing even if you use a boost converter (800V isn't much to polyimide insulation).

I could see a reason to do it on a car like the Tesla Roadster 2, mainly because of its very high top-speed (>250mph). However, there still might not be a need there and, if there was, you could do it in-motor by using a split stator winding and connecting the two windings in series for one mode (low-speed) and in parallel for the other mode (high-speed). That would be like a gear-ratio change of a factor of 4. You could even do things like changing pole-count on the fly if you wanted to get exotic, but I really doubt that's necessary.

A simple single-ratio gearbox is so much simpler and easier to build and manage than a multi-ratio transmission that I can't see a way for such an expensive component (the transmission) to save more than its own cost in the motor. In fact, I can't see it saving much, if anything in the motor - or in the power electronics.

 

...and still no discussion about EV PU trucks?

 

I'd have to agree with @"Lee Jay" on this. I don't foresee this as cutting costs. It seems just as easy and the same cost as adding another electric motor, not to mention added cooling and maintenance. I do see this as useful for EV PU however if they wanted to keep the torque curves the same for tasks such towing. Pickup trucks cost more so they can absorb costs for exotic technologies like this. I'm sure they would have to make the design a bit more robust to account for towing. Downsizing an electric motor just doesn't have the same effect as taking a V8 and making it into an I4.

 

A transmission is made up of mostly steel. Electric motors make heavy use of copper, which is currently 3.5 times the price of aluminum. A transmission has the potential of reducing the amount of copper needed, whereas a second motor will increase it. Car companies count the cents going into making a car.

A second motor will also require cooling. A two speed transmission isn't going to be much more complex than the HSD transaxle. It sounds like the transmission I linked to is combined into one unit with the motor.

 

I don't think it really does except in certain special cases.

FYI I'm an electrical engineer and my Masters Degree was in electric machines and power electronics so my opinion isn't uninformed. I've spent a good bit of the time since 1990 studying the capabilities of various types of drive train systems including motor/generators and power electronics of many types.