alt Hacker NewsI wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast. (Edit: My more clarified point is regarding the machinery required + place to accommodate them to work on electric motors vs. ICE metal parts and all the intermediary parts transfering power in the drivetrain. The shop in the video is smaller than many would imagine.)
When these hopefully go to the next generation Formula E cars, we’ll see some crazy improvements in cornering. The newest generation already has active 4WD. I imagine this can bring even better torque adjustment improvements.
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>I wonder how developing electric motors compares to combustion engines. My hunch says that it’s the main reason the Chinese high-tech electronics industry was able to develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast.
The talent had very little impact to be honest. The primary factor was a government looking 50 years down the road seeing that:
1. ICE engines have little to no long-term future in transportation.
2. global warming is a thing whether the right wing in the US likes it or not.
3. They were never going to overtake the West in ICE engines and had to attack from a different angle.
The US' lack of breakthroughs in EVs has little to do with technology or expertise and everything to do with an administration that is openly hostile towards EVs and renewable energy in general. For the rest of the planet, EVs becoming the primary form of transportation is just an obvious and logical conclusion, even if it takes us another 25-50 years to get there.
China saw it and decided to heavily incentivize and subsidize the rapid expansion of EVs both to fix the air quality issues in China and corner the market.
AFAIK Chinese electric cars used western motor drivetrains and often still do?
I'm not saying there isn't room for innovation but... Electric motors have been around for a century now already in many applications.
It's not like the Dawn of the steam engine
The new season of Formula One feels (unfortunately) like Formula E!
> develop and iterate leading electric vehicles so fast.
How do you know this for a fact? Chinese press releases? You've driven one? Some auto blogger drove one?
After world war 2 Gorbachev or whoever visited the United States and during that trio visited a supermarket. He thought it was a facade, possibly, put on just for him, there's no way Americans are this prosperous (or whatever, this good at agriculture, farm equipment, etc)
Also do the race cars have 4 wheel drive, or all-wheel drive? I'm wagering all-wheel with "torque vectoring" and "Yaw control", like a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X.
The Chinese EV industry is actually lead by development of batteries, especially CATL. Along with the pack engineering, which is good old Mech.E stuff about heat transfer and physical strength.
Secondarily power electronics; at that scale, you can't just pick a bigger transistor and call it a day.
By comparison the motors seem to be a mostly solved problem, although I'm sure there's still some scope for power-to-weight engineering there, it's not as critical as the battery pack.