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Comment by imglorp

5 hours ago

How much friction loss do you get going through a transmission compared to direct drive?

I'm not sure a direct drive is possible with EV conversions. You still need to match effective RPM range with diffs. And replacing transmission with a simpler specialized diff would cost much, much more than just using the existing transmission in place.

Very few / almost no EVs are direct drive. The industry-standard layout is an integrated package of transverse motor with two-stage reduction and final drive, giving something like in the general vicinity of a 10:1 overall ratio (longer ratios are directionally more efficient, while shorter ratios are usually more cost-efficient). That's the ballpark of 2nd gear in many cars (final drive 3-4:1, 2nd gear often around 2-3:1).

So if you mount just the electric motor from an EV (insofar as it exists as a separable part) to a manual gearbox and weld that into 2nd gear you have something which broadly matches the design envelope of that motor. You could reduce gearbox losses by also removing the now unneeded but still idling gears.

Negligible. Roll the windows up if you want that range back.

I still think it's dumb and they should package it to replace the transmission and stuff all the batteries where the engine would go.

It would be "easy" to make the motor replace the bellhousing and midsection of a 4L80 and then simply provide the same output so you can stick whatever tailhousing you want on it. Put shifter on the side in the same spot, etc, etc. Could've packaged the batteries to fit in the same place as a SBC longblock.

I can't really come up with a "good" reason they did it the way they did. The problems the transmission solves are pretty trivial. Like either replace the engine so it can work with "any" transmission that can handle the torque (i.e. most of them) or replace the transmission too. Don't replace the engine and then mandate a particular trans. The only reason I can see to do that is if it's some sort of wink and nod deal where they know that it's easy to make it work with other transmissions but they're not touting it as compatible to cover their asses.