Electric truck - tow vehicle of future ?
Interesting article about an electric Class 7 truck . Begs the question, are electric powered heavy duty pickups...ready for HD towing service... far behind ? Range right now is somewhat limite...
Forum Discussion
Hmmm...telling that you don't know much or enough of how they work...
An electric motor has one moving part...the rotor. It only rotates. There is no linear movement
The rotor consists of a shaft, metal sheets with slots stacked onto the center of that shaft, wire wound around those metal sheet slots, a commutator (there are some that do not have this) and is all glued together with special epoxy.
That then has the two ends of the shaft poke through bearings pressed into the housing. These do NOT more...except for the inner bearing race and the bearings themselves (round, roller, tappered, etc)
The commutator will have brushes in contact with it, but those brushes do NOT move. This is for a DC motor...an AC does NOT have a commutator. There are brushless DC's, but they are not the norm
That is the sum of all the rotation parts of an electric motor.
To service an electric motor is to check the bearings and brushes (if there are any) and grease the bearings. Some of my designs (Industrial controls, robotics, factory automation, motion control, etc) run 24/7. Some are still running since I left that industry decades ago. They just replaced one old ski lift in Tahoe last year and IIRC...that motor and gearbox went in in the late 70's (of course new controllers replace my stuff years ago)
For an ICE....these parts move. Either rotationally or linearly. Linear stuff goes in one direction at high speed and then abruptly stops and reversed direction in an instant. All the while there are burns (some think explosions, but not so...they are very high speed burns) inside the combustion chamber. The valves open and close to allow fresh charge in and exhaust burnt/spent charge out at very high temps...some times high enough to melt metal
The exhaust will make noise...lots of noise and is filled with nasty chemicals from the oxidation of that burn. There will be deposits down stream from the combustion chamber that are both very hot and corrosive. People have been known to commit suicide by breathing those exhaust fumes...
Now for the parts not on an electric motor, but necessary on an ICE that are hangers on:
Left off all of the various fasteners that hold all the above together. They would number in the dozens to well over into the hundreds
There is a bunch more 'stuff' that goes with any ICE...diesel has even more than a gasser...
To service any ICE, you have to change the oil, filters, coolant and a host of other fluids/etc
A BIG PS...a good electric motor for a vehicle will have great controller...which would negate the need for an automatic transmission of the complexity ICE's require. A single speed diff and non tranny...or if higher speeds desired/required....a simple two speed transmission...because electric motors can have well over 300% torque at ZERO RPM...while ICE's have zero torque at zero RPM...therefore requires and electric starter motor to get it going...
{edit}...forgot to mention that ICE's vibrate...a lot. Electrics do not and the why some states require electrics 'make noise' below a certain speed so that pedestrians can hear them coming...Plus a good controller/battery system on an electric can have regenerative braking...meaning it turns the electric motor into a generator to slow/stop by pumping the kinetic energy back into the battery system instead of ICE's wasting it by turning that kinetic energy into heat at the brakes friction material
An electric motor has one moving part...the rotor. It only rotates. There is no linear movement
The rotor consists of a shaft, metal sheets with slots stacked onto the center of that shaft, wire wound around those metal sheet slots, a commutator (there are some that do not have this) and is all glued together with special epoxy.
That then has the two ends of the shaft poke through bearings pressed into the housing. These do NOT more...except for the inner bearing race and the bearings themselves (round, roller, tappered, etc)
The commutator will have brushes in contact with it, but those brushes do NOT move. This is for a DC motor...an AC does NOT have a commutator. There are brushless DC's, but they are not the norm
That is the sum of all the rotation parts of an electric motor.
To service an electric motor is to check the bearings and brushes (if there are any) and grease the bearings. Some of my designs (Industrial controls, robotics, factory automation, motion control, etc) run 24/7. Some are still running since I left that industry decades ago. They just replaced one old ski lift in Tahoe last year and IIRC...that motor and gearbox went in in the late 70's (of course new controllers replace my stuff years ago)
For an ICE....these parts move. Either rotationally or linearly. Linear stuff goes in one direction at high speed and then abruptly stops and reversed direction in an instant. All the while there are burns (some think explosions, but not so...they are very high speed burns) inside the combustion chamber. The valves open and close to allow fresh charge in and exhaust burnt/spent charge out at very high temps...some times high enough to melt metal
The exhaust will make noise...lots of noise and is filled with nasty chemicals from the oxidation of that burn. There will be deposits down stream from the combustion chamber that are both very hot and corrosive. People have been known to commit suicide by breathing those exhaust fumes...
- Crank Shaft
- Connecting Rod & it's cap...times number of cylinders
- Wrist Pin...times number of cylinders
- Piston...times number of cylinders
- Cam Shaft
- lifter or roller, times number of cylinders
- Rocker times number of valves
- Valves...2 per cylinder and some are 4-5 per cylinder
- Timing chain
- Timing Chain gears
- Timing belt on some
- Timing belt pulley
- Damper
- Flywheel and with an automatic flex plate
- Oil Pump gear
- am sure left some parts off this list
Now for the parts not on an electric motor, but necessary on an ICE that are hangers on:
- Water pump
- Fan blade
- Alternator
- starter motor
- Fuel Pump
- Fuel injection system
- Coolant system
- Oil system..filter, etc
- Serpentine belts
- Exhaust system, CAT/DEF/muffler/etc
- Intake system Air filter/etc
- SMOG system
- am sure left some parts off this list
Left off all of the various fasteners that hold all the above together. They would number in the dozens to well over into the hundreds
There is a bunch more 'stuff' that goes with any ICE...diesel has even more than a gasser...
To service any ICE, you have to change the oil, filters, coolant and a host of other fluids/etc
A BIG PS...a good electric motor for a vehicle will have great controller...which would negate the need for an automatic transmission of the complexity ICE's require. A single speed diff and non tranny...or if higher speeds desired/required....a simple two speed transmission...because electric motors can have well over 300% torque at ZERO RPM...while ICE's have zero torque at zero RPM...therefore requires and electric starter motor to get it going...
{edit}...forgot to mention that ICE's vibrate...a lot. Electrics do not and the why some states require electrics 'make noise' below a certain speed so that pedestrians can hear them coming...Plus a good controller/battery system on an electric can have regenerative braking...meaning it turns the electric motor into a generator to slow/stop by pumping the kinetic energy back into the battery system instead of ICE's wasting it by turning that kinetic energy into heat at the brakes friction material
valhalla360 wrote:John & Angela wrote:
Good afternoon.
High reliability of EV's is documented...although there were some drivetrain issues with the early Teslas. Low maintenance has also been documented and is a no brainer. Brakes are used a lot less in an EV, really its just wiper blades tires and of course shocks. We have gone a couple years and still no maintenance...and of course never a visit to a gas station.
Still haven't been able to find any of the documentation just random platitudes about electric motors have fewer parts so the must be more reliable.
I'm looking for actual factual data that shows fewer maintenance issues based on real world numbers. I've done some google searches but it all gets bogged down in people claiming it but never providing numbers to back it up.
