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Does anyone have any reading material on the history of control systems of electric vehicles? Today most EVs use AC motors with a inverter - a bunch of power tr
by fy20 6y ago
Does anyone have any reading material on the history of control systems of electric vehicles? Today most EVs use AC motors with a inverter - a bunch of power transistors - that convert DC to AC, adjusting the frequency as required by the motor (that's what the hum you hear is). However obviously that wasn't the case 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago when electric (trolley) buses were still used in many parts of the world.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoElectric trams of the era used essentially large resistors banks and series parallel switching to control power. I expect it was much the same for electric cars, perhaps tapping off or rewiring part of the battery bank. The total amount of power probably made simple on-off control almost practical anyway.
- perilunar 6y agoDC motors driven directly from the battery, probably with a large wire-wound rheostat to control the power. Many cars had voltmeters and ammeters for the driver.
- Gibbon1 6y agoYou use a brushed DC motor where the field coil is in series with multi tap resistor bank controlled by the throttle. That's how it was done with electric golf carts before 1990. Article on 'speed switches' for old golf carts. http://www.golfcarcatalog.com/golf-cart-blog/golf-cart-speed-switches/ http://www.golfcarcatalog.com/golf-cart-blog/golf-cart-speed... Wiring diagram. https://wiringall.com/1984-ezgo-marathon-resistor-wiring-diagram.html https://wiringall.com/1984-ezgo-marathon-resistor-wiring-dia... Basically you use resistors to control the current in the motors field coil. Because the field windings have a lot of turns the current is much lower than in the armature. The armature is connected directly to the battery via a forward reverse switch.