Comment by catapart
5 days ago
It drops a buck fifty per motor. That IS a game changer.
It can make cars cheaper, or longer range, or faster, or any number of other designs based on what the manufacturer is looking for.
But to OP's point about flight - stacking 6 Tesla motors is not an option. Stacking 6 of these YASA motors? Much less weight.
Looks like it’s about 45 kg for a Tesla and 13 kg for this one. It at twice the horsepower. So maybe 8-10kg for a down rated model. IIRC, axial motors need their diameter to retain their efficiency advantage so a down rated one would likely be lighter but close to the same external dimensions.
But that’s still a lot less rotating mass, and might make multiple motors attractive again.
> It drops a buck fifty per motor. That IS a game changer.
You’re reading their marketing material. You have to think of this like all of those PR releases you’ve seen over the years about new battery technology that is 4X smaller or new hard drive tech that is 10X more efficient. The real world improvements aren’t going to be as big as their one lab test.
A Model 3 motor is already well under 150lbs, unless you start including ancillaries like the inverter and power transmission parts.
They’re not dropping “a buck fifty” from typical EV motors.
Nah, the main thing is that electric motors are already far better than they need to be -- even assuming the claims are all true, it would only make a small difference.
Shaving a couple percent off the total vehicle weight would still be a very good thing, but improving batter energy density by 10% or so would be a bigger deal for most EVs.
There might be some niche applications where the battery weight isn't the biggest issue -- like very short-range, light-weight vehicles that need to have enormous amounts of power for some reason.
I could see motors like this being used in power tools if they can be scaled down. A light-weight plug-in electric chainsaw would be pretty awesome.
> A light-weight plug-in electric chainsaw would be pretty awesome.
These already exist, in both plug-in and cordless / battery powered.
1 reply →
I'm not reading anyone's marketing material. If you want to dispute the shipping weight, feel free to correct this website whom I assume charges for shipping based on weight [0]. I'm sure they'd love to know they have it wrong.
According to purchasable equipment, the Model 3 engines weight ~175 lbs. If that's wrong, that's on them for claiming it. Subtract 28 lbs from that and you're at 147 lbs. That is very close to 150 lbs.
[0] https://evshop.eu/en/electric-motors/295-tesla-model-3-drive...
That’s a drive unit, which is more than the motor. Read the description:
> This kit includes the Tesla motor, inverter, gear box, power cables and drive shafts.
Drive shafts, gearbox, power cables, inverter. Also includes the mounts, which is likely not factored into the lab calculations for this marketing material.
You cannot drop 150lbs from the Model 3 motor because it doesn’t even weigh 150lbs.
13 replies →
Range in EVs is impacted very little by weight
Exactly. I was very surprised to find out a fully loaded 40 ton electric truck only uses ~100kw / 100km ( https://www.youtube.com/@electrictrucker ) when my 2 ton Volvo averages 20-22kw/100km on road trips.
Superfastmatt did a test recently where he proved to himself that the front area of the vehicle and trailer is the dominant factor on mileage, not the weight towed or friction.
For a guy trying to drive 300 mph though maybe he should have been able to do that with math instead of sketchy road tests.
Newton’s first law helps out a lot here.
kWh not kW.