3 ms·
Because it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest heavily into saving 100kg on the frame and then adding a 500kg battery. The i3 had a small, lighter battery and
by tpm 2y ago
Because it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest heavily into saving 100kg on the frame and then adding a 500kg battery. The i3 had a small, lighter battery and an extender.
- janalsncm 2y agoIf your frame is 100kg lighter doesn’t that mean you can get even better mileage out of your battery? Or, for the same weight, fit even more battery?
- tpm 2y agoYes, but is it cost-effective? Will the customer buy it?
- theluketaylor 2y agoThe range killer is really drag, not weight. Weight contributes, but at high speed drag is such a large draw that nearly nothing else matters. The rolling resistance coefficent of a car tire is about 0.01 and the force grows linearly with mass. Drag is v^2 and the coefficients are more like 0.2 - 0.3 of the frontal area on most EVs. Weight savings don't offer that much range savings so there isn't much incentive to pull weight out of a design, especially when carbon fibre tub construction is so much more expensive. BMW made a bet batteries would remain very scarce and expensive, a bet they lost pretty throughly.