But, how much is that in baby elephants?

Weight will help with efficiency. If you got to tow around less weight, you can go for longer.

I’m assuming the efficiency is similar to other electric motors. Maybe not the best, but likely acceptable. If it’s not, the product is DOA.

If my assumption holds true, it would allow for lighter cars and better packaging by making even more room for the battery near the bottom of the car since these engines are so small, you could easily just use one per driven wheel and forget about differentials and such. And hybrids that put the motor in a ZF 8HP transmission could have wayyyyy more power available from the electric bit, as space is sorta constrained there.

I think trains could also benefit from a weight loss IF these are durable enough. They have multiple motors usually.

Weight is important in vehicles not just because of energy efficiency, but because the more sprung mass you have, the more work the suspension needs to do. And unsprung mass is even worse, so ideally your motors are sprung mass. Currently weight is still a bit of an issue for EVs due to the batteries, but if they can make up for it a bit by having super light weight motors, the difference between EV weight and ICE weight becomes smaller. Weight is also super important to road wear, I think it is by 4th power. So 20% heavier means twice as much wear already.

They’re based in the UK, they have no excuse.

Trains don’t benefit much from lesser weight.

Drones, and planes are the most likely to benefit from this.

PS

One issue I hadn’t thought of is putting traditional brakes (which generate a ton of heat) right next to the motors. Again, we’re just asking for mechanical issues here, and we’re ballooning unsprung mass to mitigate it, especially in heavier cars that take a lot to stop.

The entire floor pan could just be one thin battery, and everything above it could be passenger and storage space.

This seems like a minor thing, but the control electronics for the motors takes up a nontrivial amount of space. So do “traditional” subsystems like hydraulics, climate control, or an old fashioned car battery (which often exists in parallel to the EV drivetrain).

Theres also safety to consider. A traditional sedan “hood,” even a small one, is easier on standing pedestrians, so it hits their legs and they flop on top, instead of slamming them like a wall (as a bus-like front would).

That’s how EVs started! Sorta.

This is from a Porsche in 1900:

And some 2000s EVs tried it. But it’s impractical.

• It increases unsprung weight, e.g. weight not cushioned by suspension. Bad for ride/handling/steering feel.

• All that vibration is HARD on the motor. Read: unreliable.

• Motor is more exposed to temperature/dust. Again, reliability.

In reality, a decent suspension needs a lot of room under the body anyway. An axle to get the motor in the body is dirt cheap on the rear, and still pretty cheap on the front, and you could just mount this thing sideways to make it flat…

That would be a lot of unsprung weight.

Handling and ride quality are dramatically and negatively impacted by every bit of weight that is not held up by the suspension. That’s why higher performance cars will have lightweight wheels. Rather than steel wheels you see on lower performance cars.

It’s better to just put all the heavy drive components inboard on the chassis and run drive shafts to the wheels.

You see motors in the hubs of bicycles, because they really don’t go that fast. So even if the bike has a suspension, it’s not that big of a deal. Motorcycles on the other hand would need to keep any heavy parts inboard.

Aptera wanted to do this with their flagship Solar Electric Vehicle (SEV).

IIRC, they switched to an outwheel motor because of the weight the inwheel motors added to the wheels. Could be wrong tho

Hub motors are a party trick. They will never reach mass market in a car.

This is already pretty close to how many EVs are designed.

Except for the fact that that much power would need massive batteries. So your thin small battery would be dead the first time you mashed the peddle to the floor

Ebike would probably fold in half from the torque lol

It only does that at peak for a few seconds, practically, about a third that power.

YMCA NASA colab would’ve been lit though

Make them stone tracks, because steel is too expensive, then make the wheels of gum, because steel wheels have too less friction. Then you have a street and a car.

Maybe we can also have them drive themselves and link them up for more efficiency also have them as a service so not everyone has to own their own and we can reduce overhead on servicing and infrastructure and … trains.

Electric motors don’t have a torque curve like ICE, which is why they don’t need a transmission. Those massive submarines run on electric motors.

What could he have possibly been trying to say?

I mean, the general appeal of ICE engines is the fuel, not the engine. Gasoline is generally more energy dense than lithium.

I think he was trying to admit he doesn’t know shit about electric motors.

“EVs lack comparable torque to ICE” - guy in my rearview mirror

My parents had an original Prius and it was a weedy little car that made those two hippies really happy. If that was his only experience with electric cars I can see why he’d think that.

But the new ones are fucking rockets. I just don’t understand why they need all that. Can they make a cheaper one that’s got 300 horsepower?

He was trying to say that he spent too much time in a media bubble disconnected from reality.

Dunno, I feel every rev head knew about that evs have no torque curve and plenty of it. The concern to me head always been weight and range when on track. EVs are great in straight line, but have a lot more momentum in corners. They generally have narrower tires as well, which is great for range, but poor for grip

I need to torque a shit

Yep, I noticed that, you’re right. And that’s near-miraculous efficiency. The maker’s website sez: “YASA also estimates that its all-important continuous power will be in the region of 350kW-400kW (469bhp-536bhp).” It also sez: "To achieve a 750kW short-term peak rating and a density of 59kW/kg … " Devi’ls in the details … The image on the ‘superblondie’ page shows A LOT of cooling built into whatever metal that is: https://supercarblondie.com/wp-content/uploads/YASA-tiny-electric-motor.webp

If it’s a Corgi, I would estimate the power output at .1 horsepower max. But if it’s a small dog the size of a large dog, then that’s something entirely different.

A dog’s power output comes from its muscle mass, which for a healthy dog is about 45% of its total body weight. This gives our 28-pound dog roughly 12.57 lbs (or 5.7 kg) of muscle.

Studies of animal muscle show that the peak power output of vertebrate muscle tissue during a short, explosive burst (like a jump or the start of a sprint) is around 100 to 200 watts per kilogram of muscle.

Now we can estimate the dog’s peak power:

• Low estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 100 W/kg = 570 watts
• High estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 200 W/kg = 1140 watts

Converting these figures to horsepower (1 horsepower = 746 watts):

• Low estimate: 570 W / 746 ≈ 0.76 horsepower
• High estimate: 1140 W / 746 ≈ 1.5 horsepower

So, a small 28-pound dog might be able to generate a peak power of around 0.75 to 1.5 horsepower for a very brief moment.

So this YASA motor is somewhere between 670 and 1,340 times more powerful than the dog it’s being compared to in weight. That’s some jaw-dropping power output.

1 dogpower obviously. /s

You can talk horsepower and dogpower all day, but I won’t really understand until you convert it to bananapower, for scale.

or about the same as a small dog.

Americans will use anything but the metric system

For all non Brits: 1 dogpower = 1005 horsepower It’s an imperial unit. You’re welcome.

Something something anything but metric…