3 ms·
When you are all-in on electric, I wonder if it could make sense for a truck to accept the unsprung weight penalty of wheel motors and go for uniform, independe
by usrusr 6y ago
When you are all-in on electric, I wonder if it could make sense for a truck to accept the unsprung weight penalty of wheel motors and go for uniform, independently steerable, suspended, self-monitoring and motored wheel-units that are simply repeated under the vehicle as often as needed for the load/power requirements and controlled with clever software that takes care of driving dynamics etc. Like a lazy copy/paste design, like all post-Tesla EV batteries are designed. It would be terrible for center of gravity because all the room between where conventional designs have their wheels would be filled with more wheels (and the accompanying suspension) but it would be a one size fits all design that I'm sure could have many benefits beyond just reducing per wheel load if the controlling software is smart.
- Robotbeat 6y agoTesla’s Semi prototypes do use 4 BLDC motors (well, more complicated than straight BLDC) from the Model 3. But I think optimization is really key for making it economically viable for mass cargo transport. Lazy copy-paste is great for prototypes and really shows how awesome electric is for making new vehicle configurations, but you really HAVE to optimize to be competitive at scale. Tesla has succeeded over the last 9 years against all comers BECAUSE they’ve optimized. Of course, manufacturability is one of the optimization constraints...