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Koenigsegg's Tiny Electric Motor Makes 335 HP and 443 LB-FT of Torque
- TYPE_FASTER 5y agoThey also make a 2.0l 3 cylinder that makes 600hp: https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a31451281/koenigsegg-gemera-engine-specs-analysis/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a314512...
- ryan-allen 5y agoThat is insane!
- gadders 5y agoMy first thought when seeing the size of these is "What would happen if you put one on each wheel?"
- desktopninja 5y agonow if only this was packaged as part of a conversion kit for ICEs. 3.5k$ would be a magic price. And a shop could similarly charge to retro it at that price. So hopefully 7k$ total. Mind you the work shops will bank even more with all the "scrap metal (engine block, catalytic converters etc)" so maybe we'd see free swap deals.
- userbinator 5y agoA hybrid conversion would be ideal, if this motor could also act as a generator. It seems like it's small enough to fit on the tailshaft of a regular transmission; or perhaps even several of them. I think that amount of power, although for only 20s, would make for a fun Tesla-beating hybrid sleeper.
- snypher 5y agoIt's way too overpowered for most ICE conversion; so an even smaller and lighter one would be fine. Now where's the batteries... Edit:"After 20 seconds, the figures drop to 134 hp and 184 lb-ft of torque.". That's more like it.
- ehnto 5y agoYour main hurdle is the driveline surviving the initial torque shock, so even with that 20sec power drop you still have the initial torque from a full battery as a risk. Not at all unsolvable, you just want to consider it before you break your axles!
- tadfisher 5y agoAt this size, you don't need axles, just mount them straight to the hubs and pay a little penalty in unsprung weight. Or use stubby half-shafts.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoThis is already a solved problem, as the accelerator peddle in an electric vehicle isn't a simple on / off switch, it's connected to a computer that talks to an electronic speed controller, thereby providing drive-train safe power application. The same sorts of governing functions are computer managed in an ICE powered vehicle too.
- ehnto 5y agoOf course, this is in response to an engine swap, just talking out that these are all decisions to be made and thought about. People regularly drop in bigger ICE motors and blow their drivelines up. There is absolutely the option of plonking in a big torquey electric motor and sending all you've got through it, without upgrading axles or using the right settings/setup in your motor controller.
- jacquesm 5y agoThis isn't a theoretical problem, even some ICEs with a lot of torque have warnings against flooring them from standstill to avoid axle/drivetrain damage.
- ehnto 5y agoOh I didn't mean solveable in the theoretical sense, I meant it is very much a practically solveable problem. Buy bigger axles, use a nuanced motor controller etc. It's a problem you have to solve for ICE swaps/tunes too. Just discussing that it's something you will likely want to consider if you're swapping from something low torque.
- elihu 5y agoThe scrap metal isn't really worth all that much. Maybe the cat is worth something. I do agree though that it'd be great to be able to buy new high-performance conversion motors for a reasonable price. (I'm working on an RX-8 conversion with a Netgain Hyper9. It's a decent motor, but 120 horsepower isn't a lot compared to the ~230 hp engine it originally had, or the motors that come in mid-range modern EVs.) On the other hand, a smaller, more powerful motor would probably need a lot of cooling. The Hyper9 is air cooled, and is supposedly about 96% efficient when it's in its optimal range. Sometimes it's nice to have things be simple. (The motor controller generally does need water cooling. It's not technically mandatory, but highly recommended.)
- kingcharles 5y agoHow many death threats have you received for the "heresy" of removing the rotary engine from the RX-8?
- robin_reala 5y agoThey typically remove themselves.
- elihu 5y agoI wish that were literally true, it would have been a lot easier. Those engines are heavy (especially with the exhaust manifold/alternator/flywheel/etc.. hanging off it).
- elihu 5y agoNone. I bought the car with a bad engine in the first place, so it's not like I threw away a perfectly good engine. (I even took the old engine to a guy that rebuilds rotaries; he took it apart and said there weren't any parts that were worth trying to reuse.) This is true of a lot of conversions: they aren't "destroying" a perfectly good ICE engine, they're salvaging a car that would otherwise be sent to the wrecker because it doesn't work anymore. I think the RX-8 is a great platform for conversion because it's a nice, reasonably modern car and they can be had for almost nothing if the engine needs rebuilding, or is too damaged to be rebuilt.
- djrogers 5y ago$3.5k is waaaaaaay too low to expect for an e-conversion any time soon. Heck, that’s too low for a decent ICE crate motor.
- dylan604 5y agoToo low? Meaning there's no room for people to make money as what installers? How does the price being low make it less likely to become a thing?
- ehnto 5y agoEven with an e-conversion you will often have to address the ECU in some manner. Even if you have a full standalone EV setup you will likely still need to integrate some portion of the body harness and fool the rest of the car. Bolting in the crate EV parts will be pretty trivial, the wiring etc is going to take time. A smart company will come around one day with a targeted selection of cars for a "plug and play" wiring harnesses and control units.
- sgt 5y agoFor that money rather spend it on a V8 crate motor like a used LS or new Ford 5.8L V8 (easy 300 hp).
- coryrc 5y agoThe problem is not the engine, it's finding a place to securely mount the batteries that won't interfere with the crash safety systems. Hint: that would cost tens or hundreds of millions per car model if it's even possible. Conversions aren't going to be mass market.
- LASR 5y agoBut what about the cost of the batteries?
- desktopninja 5y agoperhaps batteries as we know them today may be different in a couple of years. hydrogen fuel cell batteries hold promise in this regard and possibly others like salt based batteries.
- ZoomerCretin 5y agoJerryRigEverything is converting an older US military Humvee to electric: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0vZL9uwyfOFezIOiBjkdW3TTdn0Q_AKL https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0vZL9uwyfOFezIOiBjkd... tl;dw: It's much more involved than simply swapping the motor. You need to create a custom mounting bracket for the electric motor, you need batteries (used long-range 75 KwH Tesla batteries go for about $10k), you need a charging system, an electronic management system, and you need to find a way to power peripherals like A/C which are typically powered via a serpentine belt from an ICE.
- theshrike79 5y agoIn time there will be a 3rd party market for conversion kits from EV parts to old cars just like there is a huge market for frames and engines etc for classic cars today.
- jokowueu 5y agoFord is selling ev crate motor if your interested
- worthless-trash 5y agoGot a link/name for this ?
- tomcam 5y ago$5,000! https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE
- Someone 5y agoSeems they initially sold a few for $3900, but now have them priced at $4095 https://electrek.co/2021/11/03/ford-is-selling-mach-e-crate-motors-to-promote-custom-ev-conversions-like-this-f-100-concept/ https://electrek.co/2021/11/03/ford-is-selling-mach-e-crate-... https://www.thedrive.com/news/43030/fords-already-out-of-3900-electric-crate-motors https://www.thedrive.com/news/43030/fords-already-out-of-390... https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE
- KennyBlanken 5y agoWhy on earth would a company on the cutting edge of EV technology sell their motor for $3.5k? > Mind you the work shops will bank even more with all the "scrap metal (engine block, catalytic converters etc)" so maybe we'd see free swap deals. What? You severely over-estimate the value of that unprocessed "scrap metal." Also, the EV motor is probably one of the least expensive parts of the system. It's the battery and inverter that are expensive.
- rektide 5y agoone would think & hope small well designed motors would & could also be economical to build. there's probably intense process to produce these but how fancy do you need to get with 200kg of materials? whether material or production costs dominate is an interesting question.
- elihu 5y agoPermanent magnet motors sometimes use rare-earths. It's not absolutely necessary, but going without may lose some power and/or increase the weight. Induction motors don't need permanent magnets, but they're less efficient so the EV industry seems to be moving away from them. (Less efficient also means they generate more heat, which means more active cooling.) EV motors often have absurdly high RPM limits, which may require some exotic materials and/or lubricants. (I think Tesla motors go up to about 18,000 rpm if memory serves.) Copper for the windings is another high-cost material; copper has been expensive lately. You could use aluminum instead, but it would mean having to scale up the design or run at a lower power to compensate for the wire resistance. I do hope to see good, cheap, powerful motors be a thing that was more available to random third parties to swap into their old ICE vehicles. Right now the best options seem to be to use something like a Netgain Hyper9, or scavange a drive unit out of something like a Leaf or Bolt or Tesla.
- rektide 5y agook so based off your first three paragraphs what could justify all these mainstream car makers building motors that weigh 2.5X, use so so so much more material? why is Koenigsegg alone able to achieve such material efficiency, when it seems like we should be so pushed to push weight/material usage down down down? what justified such a high power density motor being so expensive?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adgjlsfhk1 5y agoFor an electric car, the hardest part to design is the battery. It's really expensive, and really heavy. If you spend a ton of engineering effort to make your engine 50% smaller and $500 more expensive, all you've done is lowered your profit margin for a tiny decrease in weight. If you instead put the same engineering effort into the battery and manage to make it 5% smaller, you get a bigger weight reduction for the car, and it's probably accompanied with a lower price. Optimizing things that aren't a bottleneck is almost never a good use of resources.
- tomjonesey 5y ago
- carabiner 5y agocracking the case in 30 seconds!
- xwdv 5y agoThey finally did it, I remember on YouTube watching videos of a man at some kind of trade show who claimed you could build car motors that were roughly the size of a soup can and far more friendly for the environment. Always thought he was a crank, but I guess not.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoScaling the weight linearly down to a soup can (1/63) gives you about 5 horsepower. The Model-T had 20 horsepower though, as does your typical riding lawn mower. So you'd have to soup it up a bit more than that.
- mkj 5y agoThat's not too far off if you go by volume instead? Perhaps other bits of the car can be more efficient than the model T to make up for it.
- jbay808 5y agoMotor torque capability generally scales in proportion to volume, but shaft speed capability typically increases as the motor shrinks, so the motor power will usually fall at a smaller rate. A motor with 1/64 volume will probably output between 1/30th and 1/16th of its power. So 20 horsepower might barely be achievable. It all really depends on the driver though.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoWhy don't you see a lot of very long thin, high revving motors for higher power with smaller size than large motors? This one has completely the opposite scale of dimensions even.
- chas 5y agoHeat dissipation mostly. Square-cubed laws are brutal for getting the heat out.
- throwaway4dd5f 5y agoI always do a quick fact-check on any automotive engine claim: HP & Torque curves vs RPM should always cross at 5252 RPM. The one in TFA does not. \_(ツ)_/¯
- FPGAhacker 5y agoI didn't see any graphs in units of hp or ft-lbs. Do you have a link?
- reissbaker 5y agoThere's a torque-to-kilowatt graph roughly near the top of the article, and you can convert kw to hp by multiplying by 1.341.
- throwaway4dd5f 5y agoCrap, my bad, I didn't even realize the graph was using NM and kW. I'll go back into my cave now.
- gnopgnip 5y agox
- reissbaker 5y agoThat doesn't appear to be true? https://auto.howstuffworks.com/question622.htm https://auto.howstuffworks.com/question622.htm Mathematically, the OP seems to be correct.
- schwap 5y agoIt is mathematically impossible for the curves not to cross at 5252.
- murderfs 5y agoThe scales are different: torque is from 0 to 700 Nm, power is from 0 to 300 KW.
- 5y ago
- usr1106 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- guerrilla 5y agoWhy not? Or is this sarcasm?
- oweiler 5y agoCars are not sustainable in general.
- moeris 5y agoYeah, we should go back to the good old days of religious wars, plagues, and famine.
- rishav_sharan 5y agoReject civilization. Return to monke.
- kingcharles 5y agoYou're right! Let's get back to burning that black gold.
- rgj 5y agoIt keeps surprising me that “you Americans” are still not using the SI system. As an European, it feels like I am reading an article from 1830, with hp instead of kW and lb-ft instead of Nm. But - out of curiosity - why is the soda can measured in ml and not in fl oz?
- mpalczewski 5y agoThe 12oz soda can?
- rgj 5y agoYeah that one ;) But gladly I just realized that litres are not an SI unit either.
- carlob 5y agoCall them dm^3 (or cm^3 for ml).
- dr_dshiv 5y agoWHAT? Of course they are, they just aren't a base unit.
- carlmr 5y agoWikipedia says they're not an official SI unit. However they work quite well with the SI units.
- valdiorn 5y agoWow that's a weird exception; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre I was always tought that the liter was an SI unit, I mean, it's defined in terms of SI units, I know it's not a base unit, but weird that it's singled out as "well, you're technically SI compatible, and you're defined in SI units, but we're not gonna let you be part of the group" :) It even has an official SI symbol (L), despite not being an SI unit, what?!
- mizzao 5y agoIs it possible to cool it in that form factor when it's producing that much power? Can you actually go around the Nurburgring with it?
- cormacrelf 5y agoNo. They can run it at full power for 20 seconds, per the article.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bdamm 5y agoYou can ace the Nuremberg in the car they make, of course..
- trhway 5y agofor 95% efficient 200kw motor you'd need to dissipate 10kw. Doing it with air is problematic, and usually motors like this are water/oil cooled, otherwise it is really limited to short sub-minute burst of full power. For example 160kw, 6.7kw/kg motor https://www.yasa.com/products/yasa-p400/ https://www.yasa.com/products/yasa-p400/
- jimmySixDOF 5y agoAt this rate I would not be half surprised to see in-wheel type hubmotors as used in some electric skateboards [1] or the OneWheel [2]. That kind of changes the whole drive train concept. [1] https://www.backfireboards.com/products/backfire-g3-with-super-flexible-deck https://www.backfireboards.com/products/backfire-g3-with-sup... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29797315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29797315
- YEwSdObPQT 5y agoElectric Wheel motors have been used before. The LeTourneau had an electric wheel back in the 1950s. This was IIRC mainly used for Earth moving equipment though. They probably don't make sense on cars though as explained by other people here.
- bch 5y agoOr Porsche[0]. In 1898. [0] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/check-out-the-first-ever-electric-car-designed-by-porsche-the-1898-p1/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/02/check-out-the-first-eve...
- mkl 5y agoThat was electric, but didn't use a hub motor: "Foregoing Porsche's new wheel-hub motor, the P1 employed a rear-mounted drive unit."
- bch 5y agoSo it does. I was recalling Porsche lore from memory and thought I had a correct reference. Iirc Porsche built an electric 4-motor (hub) car for the Paris Expo about this time… Oh, here we go: > In 1900, at the Paris Exposition Universelle…[0] [0] https://www.automobiliardent.com/index.php/home/article_detail/272 https://www.automobiliardent.com/index.php/home/article_deta...
- pengaru 5y agoAptera uses in-wheel motors in their EV reverse trike thingy.
- Yaggo 5y agoImpressive, but they are probably optimizing purely for burst power, not for efficiency, making the trick easier, because the car has an ICE delivering the base power. Compared to Tesla, they have to optimize for both power AND efficiency, because their car is running on sole battery power.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoIf my back of the envelope calculations are correct, our 7-seater midsize SUV uses about 35hp at a sustained crusing speed of 70mph. For a road car being able to produce it's maximum power for only short periods isn't much of a problem. Slightly different if you expect to be able to take it around a track.
- aseerdbnarng 5y agoQuite right. The small graph in the article confirms it. If you zoom in enough you can see the power and torque are more than doubled during the 20second burst mode, but even so it is very impressive
- HPsquared 5y agoI think Tesla cars also have a similar "burst" mode too? Some turbocharged combustion engines also have something called overboost, allowing short periods of operation at higher power than the "continuous" limit (again due to heat build-up)
- outsidein 5y agoThis might apply for the use in a car having ICE. The electric motor itself could be optimized for efficiency, too. Efficiency adds range and indirectly reduces weight by smaller batteries. To rate the efficiency, we would need more data about motor efficiency vs. loads.
- chemmail 5y agoModern Teslas also can sustain max power as well. Model 3 can basically launch consistently 0-60 in about 3.2sec some 20-30 times with no loss. The new Plaid can do low 9s back to back until the battery is low. Quite an achievement.
- _ZeD_ 5y agoeh, it's so small you can put it on a bike :)
- qwertox 5y agoI'm having some issues here with the scale. With "For scale, that's a 330-mL energy drink", do they mean that it has a diameter of around 13 cm or what? Also, aren't energy drink cans larger than coke cans? I haven't had a can in front of me for years, so using cm (or inches) would have been better.
- ttyyzz 5y ago330ml is a small Red Bull can. 13cm diameter is completely wrong, it's about half of that.
- qwertox 5y ago"small Red Bull can". I didn't know they come in different sizes. Apparently the small one is 250 ml, mid one 355 ml and then there's a big one of 473 ml. The 250 ml comes in a 14 cm height box, so I guess the 13 cm were a correct guess? A 330 ml "Sleek Can", which I guess is the same one as a Red Bull can, has a height of 146 mm.
- l0ng1nu5 5y agoYou know there's some scientists who study shapes and they say that diameter and height are different properties of a cylinder. I wouldn't know anything about that though I'm certainly no scientist.
- qwertox 5y agoIt's the article which is comparing the height of a can to the radius or diameter of the motor (apparently the radius, but it would be more logical to compare it to the diameter). It's just as valid as using bananas for scale, but the issue with the article is that that it doesn't even bother to mention the actual dimensions in cm or inches, yet it uses "tiny" in the title to describe the engine.
- unwind 5y agoBut for a circular cylinder, the height is not the same as the diameter, which of course is taken as the widest length across the circular cross-section. For a standard energy drink style can, that is around 70 mm (less than 3 inches).
- MagnumOpus 5y agoFor people who use SI units, that's 243 kW and 600Nm in a package weighing 28.5kg.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cesaref 5y agoPounds, feet, horse power and millilitres are used in one sentence which makes my head spin. Here's the same press release written in metric land: https://www.autodaily.com.au/koenigsegg-designs-in-house-ev-motor-and-drive-unit/ https://www.autodaily.com.au/koenigsegg-designs-in-house-ev-... It's good that people are getting the weight down of these motors, but i'm still unsure why I need 250kW+, let alone two of them built into the drivetrain. I've managed with <100kW for the last 30 years in my cars of choice, and I know headline figures sell stuff, but we're trying to save the planet at the moment. But I guess if it convinces petrolheads that there's still fun to be had going electric that serves a purpose...
- discordance 5y agoKoenigsegg makes super cars. These motors are not for you.
- chrisjc 5y agoNot that you're wrong generally speaking, but doesn't Koenigsegg R&D and license technology too? I believe they're trying to license (maybe even manufacture) their freevalve technology to some ICE-based auto manufacturers? So it's certainly true that most of us here probably aren't the target for Koenigsegg super cars, we might be indirectly consumers of the engines or engine technologies they create. Koenigsegg has been an incredible company to follow and their CEO is such a pleasure to listen to that they're one of the few auto companies that I'm excited about. I'd be even more excited if they took a path similar to Tesla or Polestar and started offering an affordable brand of EVs.
- eptcyka 5y agoYou most certainly are not in the target audience for anything Koenigsegg makes. Maybe a handful of HN could have the finances.
- Tildey 5y agoYC 2023: buying me a Koenigsegg Although it’s worth noting that “trickle down” tech advancements are quite a powerful force in the automotive industry
- kitd 5y agoPresumably, quite apart from supercars, these units could be useful for flight? Small and light, but with the necessary power.
- uwuemu 5y agoDoes it really help you if the engine weighs nothing when the batteries weigh a ton? Economically viable (battery powered) electric aircraft is sci-fi.
- ncmncm 5y agoAircraft mostly don't need much torque. And, a reasonable mass of batteries still don't hold enough Joules for a generally useful flight. So, given a beefy fuel cell and liquified hydrogen tank (bonus points for aerogel insulation), an electric motor optimized for energy efficiency is likely to be more useful than one optimized for torque. But no kerosene-powered airframe will be able to compete with them, once they show up. Hydrogen turbines might outdo the fuel cell/motor combo, though.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoThey are similar in power and weight to what e.g. Magnix and a few others are supplying.
- trabant00 5y agoI don't think the size of the electric motor is of concern even in a hybrid vehicle. The problem is still the batteries.
- alkonaut 5y agoYeah, but motor size might compete with other things in the limited space. If you get (say) 30L more space from making 4 motors smaller, then that's 30L you can use for batteries which is (....really bad napkin math...) perhaps around 10kWh? Or 30L more trunk space or cabin space. In a hypercar it's obviously even more cramped, but more importantly a smaller engine is lighter.
- tromp 5y agoDoug DeMuro review of the Koenigsegg Gemera 4-seater hypercar employing three of these motors in addition to a fuel engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPmCDS66Qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPmCDS66Qc
- gadders 5y agoFor those that needed it: ICE = Internal Combustion Engine
- canbus 5y agoThat'd be enough torque to rip my 70s british car to bits!
- mywacaday 5y agoI'm really excited to see what smaller and more powerful motors combined with increasingly dense battery technology does for robotics. Anyone with knowledge or expertise care to predict the next 10 years?
- londons_explore 5y agoI don't think we're close to the limits yet of how many kilowatts we can pack into a defined weight/volume. For example, one could imagine a motor having many 'onion layers' from outside to inside, where half of the layers are stationary, and half move. Magnetic fields between the layers cause the torque. By making many smaller layers, magnetic flux paths are shorter, and therefore less metal is needed for a given pulling force, and hence less space. Current motors have just two layers (rotor and stator), but in future motors with 10+ layers, total power in a given space will be very high - the only limit really will be cost and difficulty of manufacture, especially of complex bearing sets required to keep all the layers concentric. Eventually, motors will become small and light enough that they get integrated into wheels, and suddenly car design will be dramatically simplified.
- culopatin 5y agoI need this for my Miata. I’ve been thinking that the area where the fuel tank is and behind the seats could hold batteries. The range with gas is like 200mi anyway so if I could get 100 out of electric With this performance I would go for it
- ianai 5y agoThe miata or wild stuff like exoskeletons came immediately to mind for me too. I wish these were going to be mass produced.
- culopatin 5y agoIf they made an electric vw bug I feel like we could make an electric Miata. It would be heavier yes but if we keep the weight close to the ground and centered it wouldn’t be that bad
- Terry_Roll 5y agoSo if anyone has looked into motors for electric bicycles, will probably have learnt, how the copper is wound is also important to the performance & characteristics of the motor as this link explains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFSTg8BNhoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFSTg8BNhoQ But there are also many many other things which can be tweaked on an electric motor to alter characteristics as this blog explains. https://www.electricbicycleworld.com/blog/review-of-ebike-motor-technologies/ https://www.electricbicycleworld.com/blog/review-of-ebike-mo... I dont think we are even scraping the surface when it comes to electrical motor efficiency, but I think we could be seeing some innovation creeping into things like the washing machine and electric lawnmower in the future.
- gameswithgo 5y agoWe may still have many things we can do to improve the efficiency, but the efficiency pretty close to 100% already, with Tesla hitting around 94% in their motors. So not a lot of room there. But of course there is still room to shrink the motors, make the motors lighter, make the motors have more power that can be sustained over a broader range of speeds, etc. But the motors are already not super heavy or big by automotive standards, so the net benefit of those improvements are not so great, at least in normal sized cars. The biggest thing I would like improved is the range of speeds at which peak power can be sustained. In my model 3, I have around 500hp at low speeds, but it starts tapering off after 40mph or so. The model S plaid reduces this tapering by using more motors, which allows different gearing so the optimum motor speed is hit at a higher vehicle speed, and a bit more voltage.
- foobarian 5y agoThe thing about improving up from 94% is, we may not magically double the power savings. But say, going from 94% to 97% may cut the waste heat in half, which means you can suddenly run the same size motor with twice the current without melting it down. So there are some nice benefits possible there.
- h2odragon 5y agoLook at things like the "microstepper drivers" and "inverter heat pumps" too; its not just that we're getting more motor options, we're getting better at switching and shaping rich, chunky amps with little cheap chips of glass. That's opening up all sorts of capabilities that were fairy tale expensive before if they were possible at all.
- ianai 5y agoThese seem really useful for a huge range of use cases. But they also sound expensive or hard to build to the point of being bespoke: “Koenigsegg uses all sorts of interesting materials for the construction of the Quark, including aerospace/motorsport-grade steel, and hollow carbon fiber”
- sandworm101 5y agoSize is not the issue. Electric motors can be made very small and very powerful. The issue is efficiency and handling the torque. Such a motor is useless if its structure cannot handle the loads. Throw enough power into it and nearly any motor can break loose from its mounts and/or snap its drive shaft. Note too the coolant pipes. I suspect this motor cannot sustain such power for more than a minute or two. Small=light=low thermal mass=gets hot fast. As a general rule, electric parts become less efficient as they heat.
- mcc1ane 5y ago"Those peak power and torque figures are only available for 20 seconds, which is common among EV motors. After 20 seconds, the figures drop to 134 hp and 184 lb-ft of torque."
- sandworm101 5y agoIt was the lower numbers that i question. I wonder how long it can sustain even those, and at what sacrifice to efficiency.
- bluGill 5y agoYour typical car only uses about 20-30 horsepower when going down the road. However when coming off the line at a light it can use hundreds of horsepower for the 3-10 seconds it takes to get up to 60mph (for non-US readers, in the US all car reviews make a big deal of the 0-60mph times, and many magazines have tracks where they test that themselves. I'm guessing you would see 0-100mph here, which is only a slightly different top speed by I have no idea). Thus for car applications a motor that can deliver a lot of power for a short amount of time is useful and light weight is important. If this is light enough it might be worth the unsprung weight issues to put this in the wheels (particularly front wheels to get cheap 4x4) Automobiles are rather unusual in wanting and using a high amount of power in a burst and then needing a much smaller amount most of the time. Most equipment (including trucks when used as a truck) tend to need a lot more power all the time.
- danbr 5y agoKoenigsegg is a company I admire a lot. They really do seem to be on the bleeding edge of tech whether it’s ICE, electric, powertrains, aerodynamics, etc… Their engineering innovations are to push the current subset of automotive tech to the next level (Freevalve, composites). Something we (understandably) don’t see in the Ford’s and GM’s. They’re a true engineering centric automotive company, not an consumer, or “celebrity” automotive company. It’s nice.
- sizzle 5y agoHow can I get several of these motors in my car, ideally one per wheel!??
- ElCapitanMarkla 5y agoThese could be awesome for something like replacing a hefty 100 HP boat outboard. Could be really cool on a small jet boat where cooling can come from all of the water you’re already sucking up.