200BHP, 266lbft, 77 kg, engine & transmission

[robin]

These are the only moving parts:



And this is the whole engine, transmission and differential:



Neat!

[campbell]

Unobtainium?!

[Stephen]

But how big is the battery?

[robin]

Campbell, it's the engine out of the chevy electric car (bolt I think it's called). Very sophisticated electric motor design, very efficient.

Stephen - it depends how far you want to travel, of course. It doesn't have to be a battery - you could happily have a petrol/diesel tank and a turbine/generator to generate the power - but of course a 150KW turbine generator might take you back to the size of a traditional IC engine

[The turbine would probably add 3 more moving parts ...]

Hydrogen fuel cells can also work.

You have to understand that batteries won't beat petrol/diesel for energy density any time soon; but that doesn't mean we cannot use batteries anyway.

Cheers,
Robin

[Stephen]

I think hydrogen is the way forward. You can transport it.

[Dominic]

I thought that this looked like a great solution (pun intended) for the time taken to charge electric cars....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45179722

[robin]

Great find Dom. I think the recharge issue is overblown for 95% of trips as they are less than 150/day. Home kerbside chargers will work and can be done like lampposts. Low power rating as you are plugged in all night.

But this tech takes the issue away completely.

And it's Scottish! Scotland should be at the forefront of new energy. We cannot wait for fusion to save us from fossil fuels...

Cheers,
Robin

[pete]

Suzy and I were up in Aviemore last Autumn and, thanks to scattered shifts, she had to bring up the i3 up. We eidn't buy it for long journeys, we bought it to commute in which it's been ace at but...

So the i3 range is about 120 miles, less in the cold but what kills it isn't hooning (the regen braking is pretty good) but speed. More specifically it's headwind. Drag.

I had a cunning plan that she could just draft the T5, but, it turns out this was a sh*t and possibly dangerous plan (I said she just wasn't getting close enough).

So she had to charge TWICE on the way home. Once at Laggan wolftrax where we were MTBing anyway, so that didn't take any time.

The second time was at Stirling on a super quick DC charger. (About 40 minutes for 90% charge).

Thing is we'd been running around in the van all week (25mpg) and we needed derv too.

I thought we'd get home at least half an hour in front of her, turns out it was about 5 minutes. Filling up with fuel isn't instant. We had to wait a couple of minutes for a pump. Millie needed a pee and some sweets. Whereas Suzy just parked up and read her book for a bit.

I'm not pretending that it's *as* convenient, it's obviously not, but for occasional journeys at the moment it's utterly doable - I avoid it but Suzy will cheerfully take it places rather than drive the Exige...

(we've done 30k in the i3 in 2 years. Battery only.)

[pete]

I thought that this looked like a great solution (pun intended) for the time taken to charge electric cars....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45179722

That's a really interesting article actually. I'm not sure what they mean by

Drivers would use filling stations to refuel their electric cars, driving away instantly once a battery is full.

We drive away now when the battery is full, I mean not instantly, we have to unplug I suppose...

But I agree about the "Cultural inertia" - more than 10% of our staff now have electric cars. I think in part because we have a lease scheme which lets you take 4 day test drives. Folk tried them and everyone who did, got one (except one bloke, who tested a stupid hybrid Volvo he couldn't afford). And I'm only counting proper battery cars in this, not token hybrids.

[robin]

Pete, my understanding of it (limited to content of BBC article so far, though I would love to know more).

I think it is an electrolyte swap, so you drain off your old (flat) electrolyte, then fill up with new (charged) electrolyte and drive off. Just like petrol (except for the draining off phase ).

At the fuel station they would have a big tank of flat electrolyte, a charging chamber to batch charge some amount and then a storage chamber in which the charged stuff is kept; the drain pump fills the flat electrolyte tank, the filling pump takes from the charged tank. Add a big fat electricity supply and you're done. Fits into the existing liquid fuel framework, but no need for tankers to transport the fuel ...

Cheers,
Robin

[robin]

If it works, then Scotland will once more rule the liquid energy world . Of course we'll sell the rights to a Japanese investment bank and moan about what might have been 50 years from now!

[pete]

TBH I was just mocking the grammar.

It sounds like a great idea, although the recharge time issue is exaggerated at the moment as battery range goes up it becomes more of a problem.

[fd]

Robin, you watched the same video I did . . .

I the early '90s I worked on the TMST (first gen Eurostar) traction power electronics and control systems . . . 16 megawatts of motive power, 20 megawatts of total power, the traction motors were a ~ cubic meter each and there were 12 of them. A very close derivative of that, at the time groundbreaking, motor drive tech is what is described in that video . . . now affordable by joe shcmoe. The mechanicals are simply small scale optimised versions of relatively old tech . . . finally . . .

Completely coincidentally I know a bloke working for JLR (who I do a lot of R&D work for) who also worked on the same project 5 years later (by the time I was living out of a rucksack on a train in France), who was heavily involved in the JLR ipace inverter power electronics design (also groundbreaking ish - a Tesla competitor). We both worked for the same bloke in our first jobs. We're designing next generation vehicle ECU's and power control system philosophies for EV's today . . .

Back in the day we used 8 microcontrollers to manage a single motor, these days a simple arm core is more than capable of running N motors . . .

Automotive electronics, motor design and mechanical design is now catching up to that which we did many years ago despite looking 'state of the art' . . . and that is driven by political and legislative pressure, not that which is possible . . .

Engineering in these areas the UK is(was) still at the cutting edge (as it was back in the day when we went to AC motors rather than the inefficient DC chopper designs that the French used for TGV at the time) but it's all moving out of the UK ASAFP . . . a real shame but we must all look after ourselves . . .

I expect to get a lot more use out of my monster downhill eMTB in the southern european alps than I had expected before Brexit . . .

Clever people are very portable . . .

[Sanjøy]

These are the only moving parts:



And this is the whole engine, transmission and differential:



Neat!

One per corner please.

[hendeg]

One per corner please.

Not a problem sir... https://products.rivian.com