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Electric Cars as Fast as Ferraris
Ubergrunt writes "A Welsh engineering company has made a motor to be used on electric cars that will make them as fast as a Ferrari. "The motor is revolutionary in that it contains no bulky permanent magnets. Instead it relies on transmitting electric pulses across up to seven rotors, arranged in different phases. These are "fired up" in turn, much like the pistons of an internal combustion engine. There are no gears - the motor provides enough torque at one revolution per minute to put a vehicle into motion - and it spins at up to 2,500rpm.
"Size for size, we can provide 400% more torque than any type of motor currently available," says managing director John Bryant."
It's Welsh. Welch is when you go back on your word. Curiously, the Welsh find this word offensive, but it's a different word and not to be confused with Welsh!
"Electric Cars as Fast as Ferrets" ...and I'm thinking, what, tiny electric motors for burrowing robots?
--
Toby
http://bash.org/?1988
<kritical> matts: bikes go faster than cars...a bike at 60 mph is a lot faster than a car at 60 mph
<matts> kritical: um no...
<kritical> matts: um yes
<kritical> my sisters sport car at 60 mph goes faster than my dads explorer at 60 mph
<kritical> a bike at 60 mph will blow by a car at 60 mph
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
And I thought they'd made a motor out of grapes...
Yeah, I'd like to see that actually bear fruition. Chances are it will either be snubbed by the automotive industry, or will be so damn expensive they won't have a working version in commercial vehicles for 40 years.
To be able to start the car at all it has to have good torque at zero RPM
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I doubt it. Battery limitations will still render this useless for your average family car for some time.
However I'm sure this could be applied in many other areas of industry where electric motors are already being used.
East Coast Brewers
Vehicle detectors at intersections use induction to count vehicles. If you stop on one you could theoretically use inductive coupling to charge your battery, at the expense of the government.
I have seen plans for charging up battery and flywheel powered vehicles in this manner, but with more powerfull inductors.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The High Pressure Fuel Turbopump on the space shuttle has this power-to-weight ratio beat by a mile. The two-stage, eleven-inch diameter by 3 foot long turbine delivers 75,000 horsepower and weighs about 775 pounds. That works out to 100 hp per pound.
Of course, you need a supply of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to run the beastie, but if your really need the power, this is the way to get it.
If LH2 and LOX are too exotic, then try a helicopter gas-turbine. A 600 pound gas turbine can easily provide 5,000 hp.
The counter-argument is that a gas turbine needs a serious transmission, which adds to the weight of the unit. The counter-counter-argument is that these electric motors need batteries or a motor-gen set which also adds (arguably more) weight to the vehicle.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
yeah, definatly going strong in the tinfoil department. You know, it's not as if an engine that generates as much torgue wouldn't be a huge competitve advantage to a car producer ...
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Conveniently, electric motors have infinite torque at zero RPM.
Whaaaaaaa? There is no such thing as "infinite torque."
Electric motors produce their maximum torque at 0 rpm. And this amount of torque depends on the size of the motor, the current, etc.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
"Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star? We do, we do, weeee dooooo!!" --The Stonecutters (as if anyone here needs an attribution credit to know that)
Did you hear about the Toyota hybrid recall that kept stalling because its internal computer didn't know when to switch from electric to gas? Over 33 of them have been found at fault but almost 44,000 have been sold this year. That's not a recall, Ford is the king of recalls. Engine stalling vs. car blowing up. Your call.
Peace out, homies.
How about a car which:
Part of the problem is that the people who promote electric cars are the kind of people who couldn't market any kind of car at all. Their products tend to look like glorified electric wheelchairs, and about as usefull.
I want to see advocates of electric power push the advantages of the technology, not reasons why we should put up with its limitations.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Insightful? WTF? I think we need a "-1, tinfoil hat club" modifer. Either this is an idiotic comment, or it's an attempt to be funny that kind of fell flat.
WHY would the car industry want to shut this down? EVERY SINGLE MAJOR CAR MAKER IS BUILDING ELECTRICS as we speak, and most have something on the market at the moment. So far, hybrids that are only somewhat more fuel-efficient than pure gas engines have been a necessary concession, mostly because of performance, range, and infrastructure (fueling) issues.
If this technology gets off the drawing board and actually works, the car makers will shit themselves to get their hands on licenses because this seems to solve the performance issues, hands down. They'll still have to cope with range and fueling problems, but those have their own solutions coming, sometime.
And what, exactly, do you expect the oil industry to do to "close this down"? Where on earth would they get the power to do something like that, in a country like the UK?
Look, oil producers realize that hyper-aggravated prices don't help them, in the long run. That's why OPEC is struggling right now to increase the world supply by upping production, with mixed results. Big Oil wants a stable price, and not too high, either, because it makes the market nervous and causes people to buy less oil in the long run! (It's more complicated than that, but basically that's the story with any commodity.)
But their inability to increase the supply to meet the higher demand, thereby lowering the price of oil, shows that they CAN'T increase supplies much more. They would probably breathe a sigh of relief if production could go up (which it probably never will), so the only credible scenario to decreasing prices is to decrease demand.
Big Oil would benefit, in the long run, from a demand for oil that slacks off a bit and then stabilizes (below its current level) for the future. They know this, and aren't going to stand in the way of anything that keeps it from happening.
Sure, a higher power/weight electric engine capable of operation over a wide spectre of speeds is useful. It is not, however, the thing an electric car needs the most to be competitive.
It's *already* the case that an electric motor is equally strong, or stronger, than a equally heavy internal combustion engine.
The problem for electric motors is *energy*storage*, typically batteries. With todays tech 400kgs of batteries can store *maybe* a tenth of the energy in a tank of petrol weighing a tent of that, meaning it's 100 times less effective for storing energy.
To add insult to injusry the 40kg petrol-tank can trivially be refilled in a minute or two, while the battery-pack weighing ten times as much and storing a tenth of the energy, needs hours at best to approach full.
How about a car which:
* Uses absolutely no energy when stopped in heavy traffic
I don't think this is a realistic requirement. Real drivers will have their headlights on (daytime running lights are pretty much standard everywhere now), not to mention the radio, the Air Conditioning, and GPS navigation system. The A/C is the real killer there, but all of those things combined will suck the life out of any battery faster than you can say "zero emission baby!"
Also, I just want to point out that I don't think electric cars are the silver bullet panacea that they are being marketed as. It still takes x Newtons of energy to move y kilograms of mass over a distance of z kilometers. Utilising electric energy to perform the work isn't somehow "free." That electricity still has to come from somewhere. And if that source happens to be the existing power grid (i.e., you plug you car in while you're at home, or parked somewhere), then that power is still most likely coming from fossil fuels. It doesn't buy you anything.
I'm proud to live in a jurisdiction that is actually quite forward-thinking in this respect. Ontario derives less than half (42%) of its electricity from fossil fuel sources. But more than a quarter of our power is nuclear, and the US is still pretty resistant to dipping their toes back into that pool. California, for example, only uses nuclear for about 13% of their power, relying on fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) for almost 62% of their power (source).
For laughs, I looked up some info on Texas. I found that Texas derives only 7% of its electricity from "green" sources (I'm including nuclear in that number), with the remaining coming from coal, natural gas, petroleum (61%), and "dual fired" (what's that? Is that "green?") (32%). Source.
So until we address the root problems (most energy is still derived from fossil fuels, rampant overconsumption is a way of life in North America), all we're doing is moving the pollution from the highways to the power plants. We're not saving anything, it's not helping the environment, we shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back for buying an electric car... we should pat ourselves on the back for taking the bus, carpooling, telecommuniting, or just plain driving less.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Nice try. Am I right in assuming that you've never worked on a car engine? Hint: They don't have any internal gearing at all. That's what the transmission is for. The article is clearly discussing a direct drive setup with enough torque to drive the wheels without any sort of transimssion.
For those that really don't know, this is wrong and probably meant as a joke.
Wales and England are both countries within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Going into a Welsh pub and saying that Wales is a county in England is a good way to be introduced to the National Health System. Imagine telling a Texan that Texas is a county in California...
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
An advantage to living in the red states. We not only can use one, we can fix it with bailing wire and duct tape!
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
A "Dual-fired" generation plant is one that can run on either natural gas or oil. It gives the operator the option of using what is cheaper at the time.
Yup. And when you go to the hydrogen pump, who are you going to fill up from?
That's right - Mobil, Shell, BP, etc etc.
They are not oil companies any more, but energy companies. They know the writing's on the wall, and they have plans to stick around.
BTW: this is a quick interesting take on the state of oil.
There's nothing revolutionary about a motor with no permanent magnets. PM-less DC motors have existed for decades, using electromagnets in the place. Reluctance motors (?) are similar: they have a multipronged rotor, slightly offset from the magnetic poles, that delivers force by pulsing the electromagnets in series.
More recently (still at least a decade) AC motors have been growing in popularity, and they work on the principle of magnetic induction. Of course, it's difficult to start one if the rotor is completely demagnitized as it prefers that there's at least a tiny bit of a field, but nontheless...
Jw
Exactly. Everyone gets so distracted with "electricity" part so they totally miss the point of it being just an efficient and flexible power transmition method. A method for squeezing as much energy from fuel as possible.
...
Now, the car concept redisign is due time: the IC motor should not be optimized for torque delivery, but for generating electric power from fuel combustion with least losses. Therefore, converting linear motion of pistons into rotary one is no longer needed (current induction in solenoids placed coaxial along cylinders may take place anyway), but OTOH perhaps smooth rotation of gas turbine is best suited for electric power generation purposses.
Real Soon Now (or Tommorow), the generator part may get replaced with a sort of fuell cell... or some easy-replaceable form of rechargable batteries (perhaps nanobatteries, suspended in a dielectric fluid, which transports them to a "juice-squeezing" device to release stored energy. That would provide for easy handling, similar to today's gas station routine). THEN we could talk about "real" electric vehicles
To conclude: cars will probably EVOLVE into intrinsicaly electric cars, eventually, part at a time, but don't hold your breath.
This is one of the greatest things I'm looking forward to as hybrids and electrics (hopefully) catch on. I *hope* they'll lead to a quieter roadway environment where maybe, just maybe, the types of Neanderthal antisocial behaviour that's tolerated today will become less acceptable. Hey, I can dream!
Had a Prius pull up next to me at a stoplight the other day. Was quiet to start with, then I had a brief "wait, where did that car go?" moment when the gasoline engine shut off. Very cool.
which means 4 transmitions
Did you RTFA? These motors are designed to be hooked directly up to the wheel. That means that this engine doesn't NEED any transmission because it generates enough torque at 0 RPM to move the vehicle, and can rotate fast enough to propel the vehicle at all speeds.
And electric motors, properly built, are very very tough.
I don't read AC A human right
Skipping over all the issues over energy storage that are leading to the success of the hybrid design....
How is this motor new? They don't describe how multiple rotors are connected. They don't even mention the basic motor technology.
Not having permanent magnets is not a selling point in Real Motors. Permanent magnet motors are only used in very small, low-power applications--tape player, model car, windshield washer pump, hard disk motor.
Replacing the permanent magnet with an electromagnet lets you build a MUCH bigger motor. And how you connect it (the field or stator coil) to the rotor coil lets you do neat tricks. It's the motor that made electric rail possible. Same thing is in those old "Mixmaster" mixers, rigged in such a way that they keep constant speed under almost any load. Same sort of motor in your vacuum, blender, power drill, and so on. They're called "DC Machines", but because of the electromagnet, they can run off AC as well (0-60 Hz, it says in the old Mixmaster manual), and are also called "Universal machines".
But with modern solid-state controls we can do better using various kinds of "AC machines", neither of which use permanent magnets either. An induction machine is your basic steady-speed AC workhorse motor--tablesaw, drill press, washing machine, drier, window fan, fridge or AC compressor, furnace fan. They're weak at start, so tend to come up to speed slowly. An induction machine is basically a lump of aluminum in a changing magnetic field. Set it up with 3-phase AC and you don't need anything at all, set up 3 coils and put a coffee can in the middle and watch it turn. Change the frequency of the AC and you change the speed. For better power, replace the lump of aluminum with actual wound coils shorted together--no brushes, no commutator, no permanent magnet.
Next is the "synchronous machine", which can be built with a permanent magnet, but you generally don't. You do need sliprings or brushes with this one, as you provide power to a rotating electromagnet. Your car's alternator (and some bikes) use one of these--by adjusting the current through the rotating electromagnet, you adjust the generated voltage. (That's how your charging system regulator works--by changing the amount of power actually generated.)
You get bags of torque from a synchronous motor, but the problem is getting one to start turning. The classic way is to start it as an induction motor, then engage the rotating electromagnet when it is at speed. If you just start bashing 60 Hz AC into one already in synchronous mode, it will just vibrate, as the magnetic field (still thinking 3-phase) are zipping by faster than it can turn to catch up.
But with recent (last 10-15 years) improvements in power switching semiconductors, we no longer have to settle with 60 Hz AC. And, on DC supplied vehicles, we have to invert to power a synchronous machine anyway. So, you build a frequency-controlled inverter, so you can start the motor from near-zero Hz and bring it up to whatever speed you want--the synchronous nature of the beast will "lock" it to the speed from the inverter. (And you can watch the power on your drive circuits to see if you are trying to drive it too hard and are about to lose synchronization.) You can do that trick with an induction machine too, but an induction machine relies on the stator windings to induce a magnet in the rotor, so it's not so good at very low frequencies. On the other hand, it starts easily, so you don't need to match frequency to motor speed, it will just "slip". (The difference between syncrhonous speed and actual speed is called slip.)
One final trick: I've been assuming you've got a 2-pole motor: One north, one south around the outer circle at any given time. At 60 Hz, this gives you 3600 RPM--each time the voltage makes a complete cycle, the rotor has to turn to follow. Another poster hit on the right basic idea for electr
http://www.vectrixusa.com/index2.html
250 parts vs 2500 for a comparable gas vehicle.
I own a $1200 electric vehicle that is possibly the first practical electric transportation:
http://www.egovehicles.com/
It's a blast to ride and saves tons of time and money on the many short trips we all take that are too far to walk...grab a burger, drop off a video, pick up a case of beer, etc. 25 mile range on 5-10 cents worth of juice. You've got a 2-HP motor that can carry 400+ pounds up some pretty steep hills. That's pretty efficient.
It's also a reliable commuter. You can make unbelievable time on this during rush hour. Using back streets, sidewalks, alleys, parking lots, and other cut-throughs, traffic is never a problem. And if you can recharge it at work, your total range can be quite excellent.
IMO, the battery weight can actually be an asset. Putting the batteries low in the design deck, the Ego2 is super-maneuverable, even at 1 or 2 MPH, because of the low C-of-G.
Also, I was loading it into my wife's nice leather-interior SUV the other day, thinking, "I could NEVER do this with a gas vehicle." No leaks, no fumes, no grease, no hot muffler.
For a college campus, inner-city, small town, beach community, resort area, the Ego2 is hard to beat. If there was any sanity in the world, they'd be selling 3 million of these a year.
Don't tell me you think both of these technologies weren't held back by the industries you mention.
.)
Not successfully, no.
If Kodak embraced digital cameras out the gate don't you think we'd have had 10MP cameras 10 years ago?
No. Kodak has used its expertise to adapt to the new circumstances. It has lost massive markets, but it's found newer, though smaller, markets.
As the image devices are (to the best of my knowledge) fundamentally driven by integrated circuit technology, I seriosly doubt that Kodak could have made anything happen faster.
About eight years ago, there was the Apple digital camera which could take eight 640x480 pictures at $700. Ten years ago, widespread digital cameras weren't really on *anyone's* list of likely (though there were certainly many with hopes--but the same can be said for solid state storage replacing magnetic media, nuclear fusion, electric cars . .
hawk
The 7 Phased rotor is still only one moving part. and 2500 rpm is rather slow for an electric motor but more than plenty fast enough for the average car. I saw elsewhere that someone calculated a top speed of about 175MPH.
Electric motors, especially the new(ish) brushless motors are nearly maintance free. Having only two critical failure points being the front and rear bearings there is almost no reason for these things to break down. Kept clean I wouldn't be supprised to see a million miles on the motors. I'd say even to the point that you may be able to buy new cars without motors and swap in your old ones.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I found that Texas derives only 7% of its electricity from "green" sources (I'm including nuclear in that number), with the remaining coming from coal, natural gas, petroleum (61%), and "dual fired" (what's that? Is that "green?") (32%).
Dual-fired is a little bit green. Basically the power is derived from burning a mix of a traditional fossil-fuel such as oil or natural gas and convicted felons - rapists, multiple murders, that kind of thing. It's a cornerstone of Bush's energy plan.
No gears in the engine and having a transmission with gears is totally different.
No transmission is necessary. And it's a process that has been well tested. Trains are diesel electric. They have motors mounted in the wheel assemblies. Then they have one large diesel engine running a generator providing the power to the drives. And another that runs a separate generator that provides power to the train. And a bit of trivia... the unit that powers the drives is a 2 cycle engine while the other is a 4 cycle.
The reason they use a diesel electric is the amount of torque required would require a huge transmission. Gas/Diesel engines need transmission because they have a sweet spot where they provide the most torque. Electric motors, on the other hand, are capable of providing pretty much the same torque at 1 rpm as they are at their max rpm.
Personally, I'm with another poster here. Diesel electric should be investigated for heavy duty applications like Semis and Buses.
But even with the current hybrid (gas) electric cars there is a healthy gain in efficiency.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
You are kidding right? Let's think about this for a second...
IC engines use an explosive propulsion. An electric engine does not. Which is safer?
When your single IC engine dies on the freeway, you will to (or at least you are not going anywhere). If one of your 4 an electric motors die on the freeway, you loose some (25%) power but can drive home anyway. If you are worried about the car pulling to one side, I'm sure that the controller that is undoubtedly making several thousand adjustment per second will adjust the power to the other motors to compensate.
If one of the bearings on your wheels hubs of your IC engine powered car freezes up, you might flip. If one of the bearings on the electric motor sieze up, you might flip... Ok, that one is equal, but how often does this happen anyway?
Your average IC engine has hundreds of moving parts with thousands of things that can go wrong with them. Then we get to the transmission, the differential, the fuel system, the smog systems, the electrical systems, etc... Your average electric motor has as few as 1 moving part and a limited number of failure points (a blown fuse would be the main one).
Your IC engine gets so hot and has so much friction that it requires several fresh quarts of oil per year. Your average electric motor will probably need to be regreased once or twice in it's life because it is several times more efficient (read cool and less friction).
As for accurate voltage... Where do you get this idea? Try hooking up a variable pot to an electric motor some time and see what happens as you turn up and down the resistance (and thus the voltage to the motor). All that happens is that the motor speeds up and slows down. There are many very well tested and proven methods of using resistance or speed feedback from an electric motor to very precisely control it's RPM and torque. These are not "far in the future" concepts but rather "far in the past" inventions. Nothing new or particularly difficult here. I would be VERY suprised if electric motors are not orders of magnitude more reliable and safe than Internal Combustion engines.
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
>>but, seriously, why do so many people try to equate a fun, powerful car with penile size?
Because these things are mating strategies. Chimps and other primates (people) make loud noises in public to attract attention and express dominance in the local group. People now have very complex dominance hierarchies, but the behaviors are still ingrained from the quite recent past when we all lived in small groups just like chimps. Chimps and gorillas yank on branches and throw things around. People rev their engines. But it's all fucked up and nobody understands it because these guys can BUY loud engines/harleys etc. We do it without understanding why, just like all instinctual behavior. Of COURSE it's fun! Being at the top of the dominance hierarchy means you get the most sex, food, places to hang out, and you also get to push around those lower-ranking doofs. And doing these behaviors (revving engines, playing loud music etc) are going to FEEL fun to our brains, because the unconscious part of our mind knows it's going to pay off in mates, food, position etc.
People equate these things with 'small penis' as a shorthand way of saying 'this guy wouldn't even make beta male in a real primate group.'
I have a question for all you folks out there: why don't women ever rev their engines, burn off their tires etc? Nobody talks about "whoa, she must be making up for her tiny vulva" or something.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Couldn't you just hire a car for the long distance trips? You might find that it's more cost effective overall if you can make 95% of your usage significantly cheaper.
Thinking outside the square can help in more every-day ways as well: For many people taking a taxi instead of owning a car actually works out cheaper in the long run. You have to factor in depreciation, maintenance, registration and insurance. That's going to add up to at least $2000 a year, before you even drive anywhere.