4 ms·
No drive shafts, no clutches. I always thought it should be a motor for each wheel, but nobody seems to be doing that now. Both physical brakes and regenerati
by corbet 8y ago
No drive shafts, no clutches. I always thought it should be a motor for each wheel, but nobody seems to be doing that now. Both physical brakes and regenerative braking exist.
(One real surprise with our new Bolt is that you can't do regenerative braking when the battery is full - there's no place to dump the energy. Makes sense once you think about it).
The simplicity of electric cars is one of their big advantages, but also one of the reasons that US dealers (other than Tesla, obviously) aren't enthusiastic about selling them. There's almost no periodic maintenance to be done, and little to break, so little in the way of post-sale revenue.
- zaarn 8y agoThere are some companies working on "1 motor 1 wheel", it's still very early on though...
- arethuza 8y agoDoesn't that cause problems with relatively high unsprung mass - which causes its own problems?
- tomatotomato37 8y agoUsually the motors are still mounted to the chassis with some type of halfshaft interface in those cars rather than being directly mounted to try wheels; there's just more of them
- analognoise 8y agoThe first "1 motor 1 wheel" design I can think of is from 1904: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche So it isn't THAT early, if you add in 115 years of development.