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Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
- oxfeed65261 4y agohttps://archive.ph/OMAs9 https://archive.ph/OMAs9
- senectus1 4y agoI love this concept. It just makes so much sense in an electric vehicle to have Axial/Hub motors, something I'd expect Tesla to lead on tbh. should have been in the "Make it less dumb" step.
- jonah 4y agoOne motor her wheel but inboard like Rivian is a good idea. Hub motors on the other hand add a lot of unsprung weight and are not a good idea.
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- devnulll 4y ago> Putting a motor on each wheel — or at least one on each axle — could translate into hair-raising EV driving performance. I don't understand this. My Plaid Tesla has a motor on each of the rear axles, and it's direct coupled to the wheel. The already are doing torque vectoring. Like all things in engineering, the trade-off's are critical. This article doesn't go at all into the pros/cons of the approach Tesla (and others) are doing as opposed to this approach. As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant. ... with that said, bring on the competition. The whole world wins with every improvement to transport and electrification!
- bombcar 4y agoThe idea of a motor on each wheel independent has obviously been considered, but what is often ignored is the sprung vs unsprung weight. You could develop a pretty amazing off-road vehicle with independent electric motors in each wheel, but it would be a relatively bumpy ride.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> You could develop a pretty amazing off-road vehicle with independent electric motors in each wheel, but it would be a relatively bumpy ride. Military EV prototypes are considering wheels-in-hubs, because they have complex suspension and because of under-armour, but yeah it means the motor is basically un-suspended.
- _carbyau_ 4y agosprung vs unsprung is a ratio. These vehicles are likely heavy enough that electric motors in the wheels might not change that ratio much. And swap/repair would be convenient!
- bombcar 4y agoAnd at something like 10k pounds empty, and with army dudes in the cab who nobody cares about getting bumped, it might be the way to go.
- shrubble 4y agoThe Mercedes 300SL, the Gull Wing of 1954, already had inboard-mounted brakes to reduce unpsrung weight. I would assume that any Mercedes engineer would be familiar with the concept...
- Wistar 4y agoAs do the Jaguar E and XJ types, and perhaps other Jags. The Audi 100, some Alfas and Lotus cars, too.
- sorenjan 4y agoIf you're interested in these things, here's an article about Koenigsegg's electric motor: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a38940998/koenigsegg-quark-electric-motor/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a38940998/koenigsegg-quark...
- metadat 4y agoWhy do EVs of the current age look so douchie? I wouldn't be caught dead in one. Tesla model S, X, and Y. All Lucid models. Mercedes and Ferraris. Why can't they look neutral? I want low-key, efficient, safe, and functional. And ideally more than 35 American miles of range.
- chrisseaton 4y agoLook like bog-standard saloon cars. What's your issue?
- metadat 4y agoI saw an E-Mercedes in my neighborhood today. It was half minivan, half future, with a full plastic front, mostly transparent with no ventilation. What the heck, just.. why? I experienced a visceral negative reaction, like seeing a stillborn child. What are the people who make and purchase these physical atrocities thinking? How do they sleep at night?
- chrisseaton 4y agoI don’t know what ‘half future’ means. But they have plastic fronts for pedestrian crash safety and they can be full plastic unlike normal cars because they don’t need radiators. Same for ventilation - they don’t need cooling so no ventilation.
- metadat 4y agoI wish I'd taken a picture. Pretty sure you'd agree and despise what's coming off the line.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoI mean the Ferraris just look like... Ferraris. Tesla Model S looks like a pretty normal car to me, but I agree the Y is goofy looking. I dunno. If it's electric, I guess it's supposed to look futuristic. No accounting for taste.
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- fomine3 4y agoCurrent motors are enough for public road non-tow performance. I don't see practical significant advantage.
- jabl 4y agoSure, we all know the big bottleneck for EV's is the batteries. But there's a lot of individually tiny things that can be improved to make that battery last longer. Like high-strength steels, aluminum or even composite construction to save weight, aerodynamic improvements, low rolling resistance tires, and yes, light-weight high-efficiency motors like this article talks about. Could we make do with ye olde three-phase induction motor? Sure, that is an extremely good design, simple and yet pretty high efficiency and with a century-long track record. But if we can make something lighter-weight and with even better efficiency, why shouldn't we do it?
- chorsestudios 4y agoThe weight reduction seems like a significant advantage
- it_citizen 4y agoWhile I like the technology aspect, I am secretly rooting for expensive cars to become uncool. Small boring self-driving cars, possibly collectively owned instead of big expensive individually owned cars often used as a proof of social status.
- mechanical_bear 4y agoWhy?
- it_citizen 4y agoClimate change reports are all pretty clear we need to move to smaller, less powerful cars to meet our climate pledges. And produce less of them. I think starting to see cars as a simple mean to go from A to B instead of a symbol of freedom, status or virility would really be a huge win. I also hope that on the long run it would help more city dwellers accept the idea of sharing cars instead of owning one. Collectively owned self driving cars could really help reshape our cities, reclame the insane amount of space we dedicate to roads and parking spots and funnel money into more public transit.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoI don't have a "climate pledge", nor do I need to move to a smaller or less powerful car or demand that anybody else change their lifestyle. What I will do is keep an eye on what the ultra-rich "experts" who seem to be most concerned about climate change do. When they give up their mansions and yachts and islands and private jets, eat bugs and teleconference to Bilderberg, that's when I might reconsider my lifestyle. Until then the signal from those experts is crystal clear: climate change is a non-issue. And I wouldn't want to risk being an expert-denier.
- saagarjha 4y agoYes, the best way to respond to a collective problem is wait for everyone else to do their part.
- elif 4y agoThe perspective of this piece is a little suspicious: -ferrari still maintain that they will never produce electric cars -the concept of hub motors is a fad that has come and largely gone. Putting the motors inside the wheels leads to reliability concerns -motors with smaller diameter will need more power for the same performance of a larger diameter motor, and the battery is the heavy part Normally each of these i'd let slide as journalist ignorance but the combination makes this read like ICE propaganda to me.
- hooloovoo_zoo 4y agoFerrari has no choice. They’ll eventually be banned on noise pollution grounds/ be too low performance to be considered super cars if they stick with internal combustion.
- speedgoose 4y agoThey actually managed to get a luxury bullshit ICE vehicles exception for the upcoming European ban of ICE cars.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoPlaid's times around the Nurb show that when weight gets solved with solid state batteries, which is what all the high end cars will use, ICE won't be competitive. And while it's been a bit like fusion power, always a couple years away, enough is happening in solid state that it's probably happening in a couple years. Now, it might now be competitive in the mass market, where I believe sodium ion and LFP/LMFP/etc chemistries will dominate for probably a decade, but it will own the 100k+ car segment.
- dncornholio 4y agoYou mean, plaid has terrible Nordsleife performance? Overheating, super bad brakes and they run out of charge after 1 lap. Also, the lap-record of the plaid is not impressive at all compared to ICE. The plaid lap-time was not on a standard car. They had ceramic brakes which you cannot order from Tesla. There were probably more modifications done on the car. Also, a part from the weight, the range of EV vehicles seriously needs to go up to be competitive to ICE. Plaid's Nurb lap only showed how far behind these cars really are still.
- domtom1 4y agoMerc's and ferrari's big edge is r&d. F1 provides a lot of research for the batteries for the big companies who want to produce high hp ev's, Ferrari and Merc. Merc holds the world record of 1000km driven on a single charge. Its a concept car but still. They mention specifically that they used merc f1 engineers with also the help of the r&d of the f1 team. In the long run tesla will just be another car company with the big guys back on top because of this r&d from motorsport. Not just merc either eventually NASCAR will use hybrid v8s and companies like toyota, chevy, ford etc. will get all of this research and put it into real cars. This is speculation but its been happening with combustion engines for years. A lot of the reason for good MPG cars is motorsport. Here's the link for the WR EV Merc: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2022/04/13/world-record-mercedes-benz-vision-eqxx-travels-1000-km-on-a-single-charge/?sh=5dbbeea64796 https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2022/04/13/world-reco...
- numpad0 4y agoIsn't this more about economically producing low-volume motors, than about designing in-wheel motors? Production process seen in the video looks way simpler, requiring far less jigs and process adjustments compared to more typical EV motors. I don't see Ferrari or performance cars divisions of Mercedes suddenly starting to ship 500hp motors at 10k units/year volume, so the production process would have to adjust according to their volumes, and to me this design seem to do just that.
- gpderetta 4y agoApparently Ferrari shipped ~10k cars a year in last few years. And the lower models have about 500hp (Don't quote me on these numbers, it was just 5s of googling it). Still Ferrari is moving from being a small exotic sports car manufacturer to a more generic luxury car manufacturer.
- rob74 4y ago> All EVs offer the sensation of instant acceleration ...but of course luxury brands will happily charge you ten times more for that little bit of extra acceleration. Which also ensures future noob owners of Ferraris will keep crashing their eye-wateringly expensive cars (hopefully not causing others to get hurt in the process).
- 2sk21 4y agofrom the manufacturer's viewpoint the main problem with EVs is that there is much less scope for differentiation in the power train. Most manufacturers are going to be using similar battery technology. I think that motor technology will also become commoditized in due course. The only areas where manufacturers can genuinely differentiate themselves will be styling and software.
- texasbigdata 4y agoAnd aero performance? And materials? And reliability? And availability of support (and charging, although that will go away), and resale market depth/liquidity? And branding? And interior layouts (the Lincoln grotesque most recent model car as an example)? With features (the giant tesla glass sunroof)? With new innovation (further soundproofing)? With more efficiency (greater energy recapture on breaking)? I don't know, once there's 20 credible manufacturers in this space I bet they will compete in any way possible. Just like any other industry.
- gregoriol 4y agoCombustion engines haven't changed that much in the last 50 years, and most brands use similar designs. Rolls-Royce and Bentley have been using the same engine design for ages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce–Bentley_L-series_V8_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce–Bentley_L-series_V...). Differentiation is not on one part.
- KaiserPro 4y agoSkoda, VW & Seat all use(d) the same base for their hot hatches. Its not uncommon.