Future of Subaru if/when electric cars take over

[JmP6889928]

OK, it's time to dial back the rhetoric and personal insults. Technical discussion, including disagreement, is OK, but take the political posturing to the PA.

 

Understood. Read my previous post. No political posturing there.

[JmP6889928]

I would not argue that electric cars are more reliable. Electronics has been my life and battery technology is NOT as reliable as a tank of petrol and while the electric motor is quite reliable the power electronics required to control the motors is NOT.

 

Electric cars are still in there infancy and I'm happy for others to be the lab rats testing them. They sound great to anybody without a technical background who's main focus is the running costs.

 

Anyway the sales figures for all the major automotive manufacturers is out for 2018 and the numbers of new cars is down for the leading players like GM and Toyota BUT Subaru is actually UP so they must be doing something right.

 

Subaru sales rose 5.0% to 680,135 vehicles in 2018, up 16.7% from 2015, a big success against its big brethren.

 

I have designed and built electric motors for almost 40 years that we use for Group 7 (a CanAm term meaning basically unlimited development) slot car racing. The motors have become increasingly faster and more efficient, and are able to run much longer with less heat generated. We use brush type motors, but the brushless designs in the RC cars are truly incredible in the amount of horsepower they generate versus their size. One RC motor can power a kids ride-in plastic jeep and with a little bit of fiddling, it can make the thing go pretty fast.

 

We are currently running motors that weigh less than 13 grams and can produce almost 1.25 horsepower. They are truly incredible and our designs are used in military defense missiles as cooling fan motors for the internal targeting computers because of the rpm they will generate and they don't fail under the load.

 

As someone that has been involved in electrical/electronics, you can see from the photo, it's a completely different design than the traditional full magnet can type of motor you'll find in a hairdryer. This motor is probably about 8 years old, but it has ball bearings in both ends, completely gauss matched cobalt magnets, and the armature has been custom wound and dynamically dual plane balanced to .00005 grams to virtually eliminate vibration. The air gap between the armature and the magnets is precisely .012" and that gap is critical to performance and reliability. This motor will run 40 minutes (length of a race-8/5 minute heats) efficiently and while the brushes will wear down, it will continue to run at the same speed throughout the entire race. This motor and others of the same type will push a 1/24 scale slot car at speeds in excess of 135 actual mph on the straights geared at 5:1 and then has incredible braking power too.

 

Again, I love excellent debate. I state what I know to be fact, and while the truth does hurt sometimes, facts and truth are exactly that.

[JmP6889928]

A 9 year old video of Group 7 slotcars just to show you how fast they really are. At the very beginning, you'll see the cars lined up at the starting line, then you'll see a bunch of pit work, which you may or may not find boring, but then when the race starts at about 54 seconds in, you'll see what I mean about the speed these small motors can generate. Remember this is 9 years old and they are much faster now than then.

 

[hadvw]

As occupants, we are unable to cause any lasting damage simply because we don't occupy enough space to really do any harm.

 

 

You've repeated this claim several times. I want to know what you mean by "any harm". Harm to the basic rock, or harm to the ecosystem that currently exists? The former, sure. But what's the point of saying that "we can't make the earth disappear completely"?

 

 

 

I promise you, if all the nuclear powers decided to let go of all their arsenal at once, most of this planet would be unrecognizable / uninhabitable by most species for many, MANY years. And thousands of species would be wiped out.

 

 

 

Now imagine if we decided to focus ALL global production on nuclear bombs because, for whatever reason, we hated life. We could pretty much destroy all life on the planet. So yeah, we have the ability to do a lot of harm.

[xt2005bonbon]

I have designed and built electric motors for almost 40 years that we use for Group 7 (a CanAm term meaning basically unlimited development) slot car racing. The motors have become increasingly faster and more efficient, and are able to run much longer with less heat generated. We use brush type motors, but the brushless designs in the RC cars are truly incredible in the amount of horsepower they generate versus their size. One RC motor can power a kids ride-in plastic jeep and with a little bit of fiddling, it can make the thing go pretty fast.

 

We are currently running motors that weigh less than 13 grams and can produce almost 1.25 horsepower. They are truly incredible and our designs are used in military defense missiles as cooling fan motors for the internal targeting computers because of the rpm they will generate and they don't fail under the load.

 

As someone that has been involved in electrical/electronics, you can see from the photo, it's a completely different design than the traditional full magnet can type of motor you'll find in a hairdryer. This motor is probably about 8 years old, but it has ball bearings in both ends, completely gauss matched cobalt magnets, and the armature has been custom wound and dynamically dual plane balanced to .00005 grams to virtually eliminate vibration. The air gap between the armature and the magnets is precisely .012" and that gap is critical to performance and reliability. This motor will run 40 minutes (length of a race-8/5 minute heats) efficiently and while the brushes will wear down, it will continue to run at the same speed throughout the entire race. This motor and others of the same type will push a 1/24 scale slot car at speeds in excess of 135 actual mph on the straights geared at 5:1 and then has incredible braking power too.

 

Again, I love excellent debate. I state what I know to be fact, and while the truth does hurt sometimes, facts and truth are exactly that.

 

This makes me think now... Which part of an electric motor (for cars) does wear down the most/quickest over time? Never thought of this before.

[DrD123]

Now imagine if we decided to focus ALL global production on nuclear bombs because, for whatever reason, we hated life. We could pretty much destroy all life on the planet. So yeah, we have the ability to do a lot of harm.

Do you not remember the cold war? we sort of did that, and can pretty much do that (either the US or Russia, anyway)

 

It's pretty hard to argue that the industrialization of the world hasn't increased the CO2 level, etc. Have we had global warming/temperature increase events in the history of the world? absolutely - so we aren't necessarily making something happen that hasn't happened before, or won't happen again, but we are sort of hurrying it along.

 

Back to the topic at hand, I don't see electric vehicles as a viable replacement technology until there is a solution to the power and range problems. Most folks are pretty unwilling to cough up the cash for something with what is perceived as a significant limitation, and which comes at a premium. Can fast electric cars be made - absolutely. Can long range ones be made - more than likely. Can you have a reasonable combination of both and compete with a traditional internal combustion engine? No - they still have a long way to go.

 

As far as environmental friendliness and things like that, keep in mind that you still have to build the vehicle, which isn't necessarily that clean - particularly when it comes to the power supply part. Batteries are currently somewhat large, and expensive (insanely so when you look at something like a Tesla - less so with a hybrid like a Prius - no idea with the Leaf or other plug in electrics.)

[Tronic]

Yes you have to look at the current state of Electric to see that it has a long way to go by the time you "Scale Up" what works in a model car to what works by the time you meet what humans expect.

 

The big part of the problem is what humans expect. They have been mentally conditioned to the "bigger is safer SUV" and now we are screwed because even if manufacturers built really small, lightweight vehicles that had the performance and range, NO ONE would buy one. So what we are stuck with is literally tons of metal that most of the time is moving just one person about.

 

Yes its entirely possibly to build really great electric cars right now, but there is no market for them.

 

The likes of Tesla over here is going nowhere fast, the cost of their cars is simply out of the range of the mass market. I would say anything above $80K and the number of potential buyers begin to drop off very sharply.

 

You have to remember we are still not utilizing the combustion engine efficiently either. That smaller "Ideal" more efficient electric car could also be powered by a MUCH smaller combustion engine that has both the performance and range.

 

Until the size and weight of the "Car" begins a downward weight/size spiral instead of an upward spiral we are doomed.

[08SpecB_DE]

This makes me think now... Which part of an electric motor (for cars) does wear down the most/quickest over time? Never thought of this before.

 

In the small sampling of hybrids that I've worked on, I'd say the battery. Not sure what kind of mess dealers see but Prius are known for needing new transmissions due to them no longer regenerating the hybrid battery. I've installed a few batteries and those bills run between $3000-$4000. I've rotated tires on a Tesla but that's it

[JmP6889928]

You've repeated this claim several times. I want to know what you mean by "any harm". Harm to the basic rock, or harm to the ecosystem that currently exists? The former, sure. But what's the point of saying that "we can't make the earth disappear completely"?

 

I promise you, if all the nuclear powers decided to let go of all their arsenal at once, most of this planet would be unrecognizable / uninhabitable by most species for many, MANY years. And thousands of species would be wiped out.

 

Now imagine if we decided to focus ALL global production on nuclear bombs because, for whatever reason, we hated life. We could pretty much destroy all life on the planet. So yeah, we have the ability to do a lot of harm.

 

OK...so first a bit of a history lesson about atomic and nuclear weapons. Tell me the half life of radiation contamination? I don't know how old you are, but the common teaching since I was in school says it's 500 years before anyone can even begin to look at occupation of the contaminated site.

 

So, with that in mind, google a look at Nagasaki and Hiroshima and tell me what you see. You'll find that the "contaminated" areas of those two cities that took the atomic bombs are mostly brand new, urbanized, and have no issues whatsoever with people living on the ground the bombs exploded on. Chernobyl, which by modern standards, was a absolute nuclear catastrophe, which was the worst in history. That happened less than 35 years ago, and people are already able to visit Pripyat without any special contamination suits, except of course at ground zero by the actual reactor, which still remains too hot for much occupation, but it's also gone down in the past several years to a level that humans can now visit with appropriate gear for a period of time, without being affected by the radiation. Again, it's still way too hot for normal occupation, but that portion of the planet is already healing itself, without human intervention.

 

As I have said, we don't possess enough clout, for lack of a better word, to cause damage to this planet, even if we exploded all of the bombs and killed all of the occupants including wildlife. The planet would go on and in a few thousand years, life would begin to spring forward again, because the planet will heal itself.

 

As occupants, we can't permanently damage this planet. We are simply too small and even with all of our industrialization, fossil fuel burning vehicles, smokestacks, heat generating plants, and supposed CO2 generation, there is far too much of the surface of the planet that is completely and will always be completely, unoccupied by people. Landmass, which is mostly unoccupied worldwide as evidenced by actual population per square mile, versus the amount of water and polar caps, is so small that the ratio is too great for us to do it, even if we wanted to.

[JmP6889928]

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention. AlGore's supposed hole in the ozone layer was another huge fallacy. One single volcanic eruption, not even a very large one, generates a larger hole in the ozone layer every single time than anything the human race has generated in it's entire history of existence. You can do a bit of research and find that to be fact too.

[ehsnils]

This makes me think now... Which part of an electric motor (for cars) does wear down the most/quickest over time? Never thought of this before.

Primary item as I see it would be the bearings, but temperature changes also puts a stress on the material over time. Otherwise I'd see as noted above that the batteries is probably the item of wear in any vehicle.

 

The 1.25hp from 13 grams - it's interesting, but I don't expect a long lifetime from those engines.

[JmP6889928]

Primary item as I see it would be the bearings, but temperature changes also puts a stress on the material over time. Otherwise I'd see as noted above that the batteries is probably the item of wear in any vehicle.

 

The 1.25hp from 13 grams - it's interesting, but I don't expect a long lifetime from those engines.

 

We build them for extreme use and speed, and a 3 pole armature would never work for anything heavy. The slot cars only weigh about 40 grams total, so it's vicious hp to weight ratio.

 

Our design would not work on a real vehicle because while we have great torque at 40 grams, it would not have sufficient torque at 3500 lbs. What it does show, however, is that refinement year after year by complete lunatics like the slot car racing StupidFast community, can produce some unbelievable results from a motor that DID start out as a hair dryer type of motor.

 

Electric cars, if ever perfected, COULD be (and currently are in the top 10 of quickest/fastest production cars-I believe Tesla is #1 or #2?) incredibly fast and reliable, but the issue is the power source itself, not the motors.

 

The batteries are not capable now, and the problem is charging those batteries rapidly and efficiently, without undue strain on the actual electric power grids. Will the batteries become capable? Batteries that could support my 13 hour each way drive along with about another 13 hours total drive time once there, are something I can't see in the future, but then again, I'm not an electronics/power supply engineer.

[dgoodhue]

Excellent and intelligent debate. Your points are well taken and in regards to the solar panels, I do understand their benefits. I was just stating the fact that CA isn't the only place where they do work. Wind can also work in some places, but the cost is prohibitive seeing as how expensive the windmills are and the maintenance involved to keep them running. Just drive by a wind farm and count how many are not running-those need the maintenance and it's extremely expensive. Besides, they don't do anything to beautify the environment either, just like solar panels.

 

Different solutions makes sense in different climates. Solar probably isn't that effective in Alaska ether. MA put a wind farm in shallows of salt water bay. I have never looked into the maintenance, but I can't imagine being out at sea is easy for maintenance and I know what salt air does to my boat intern of corrosion.

 

The lunatics that claim the sea is rising obviously don't understand that water displaces the same space whether frozen or liquid, so those claims are nothing more than a way to rile up the public for their cause.

 

This lunatic says the seawater is rising . It averages about 3mm a year. I work for a large commercial property insurance company, I don't know what 2018 results were but I am guess it rose again. (It usually is discussed at a February meeting) My company cares about the sea level rising as it affects our flood maps and exposure to liability. Even those small amounts add up over the years and the additional water level compounds with storm surges. My company doesn't take a stance on global warming, just the facts about temperature and sea levels and we look at the trends. The main components of rising water levels is glaciers melting on land and temperature of the ocean increasing adds additional volume. Fresh water glaciers melt in salt water actual displace more volume that salt water, but it is a very minor component of water level.

 

No politics here, I am independent that believes in some conservative and liberal views. In talking politics, its seems like every is against me.

 

You sure don't like Al Gore, I have seen you mention his name more times in this thread that I have in the last 10 years His is just a politician, he isn't the 1st to skew the facts or profit from his position and won't be the last.

[dgoodhue]

I would not argue that electric cars are more reliable. Electronics has been my life and battery technology is NOT as reliable as a tank of petrol and while the electric motor is quite reliable the power electronics required to control the motors is NOT.

 

Gasoline power cars have become increasingly complex with electronics as well. I think the electronics will be a wash once (or if) the electric car field becomes a mature industry. I would imagine the technology is available to make an automotive electronic motor controller reliable. I worked as an industrial field engineering at my last job, quite a few plant that ran 24/7 except for one maintenance period year. Some of the critical controls included electric motors. I don't know the reliability of the batteries as I haven't work in that field, but they don't seem to be as big an issue an the naysayers seem to predict. I was actually search about Telsa a few months ago to see if they have noticeably reduce performance over time and I could not find any significant evidence in my limited search. Auto Manufacturers are using heaters and sensors to optimize the battery on electric vehicles. Considering how small our cell phones are they have pretty good battery life in the way we abuse them. I remember 10 years ago the naysayer kept saying wait until a Prius needs a $8-10k battery, the price has come down and they have proven to more reliable than all chatter I saw.

 

The likes of Tesla over here is going nowhere fast, the cost of their cars is simply out of the range of the mass market. I would say anything above $80K and the number of potential buyers begin to drop off very sharply.

 

At least in the US, the Telsa model 3 that they are delivering is in $50k range from what I have heard. They supposedly start at ~$35K (but that is not what they are manufacturing) I think at $40k they would sell a lot of them in the US assuming they are reliable.

[Tronic]

The Tesla 3 certainly looks to be in the right price range. One can only hope that other manufacturers chase this price point. it could be the game changer.

 

With Tesla cars in New Zealand currently in the $122K to $232K price range at present, they are stuffed.

 

Power electronics is not reliable at any level compared to small signal electronics. As soon as you start handling power the reliability drops. Your computer power supply or the power supply on any board is not as reliable and the rest of the electronics.

 

Even a small model speed controller is hundreds of amps and only low Voltage, when you get into handling kilowatts if things go wrong they really go BANG in a big way. High Voltage and high currents. Pretty sure what your going to see is more vehicle fires given time as these Electric cars age. Contacts oxidize and their resistance increases over time. The battery is storing a massive amount of energy in a chemical based system, if something goes wrong and all that energy is unleashed is a small amount of time........

 

I work on all sorts of electronics to component level. One of the things I repair is treadmill boards. You should see how ugly things can get with an electric motor of less than 3Hp !

[hadvw]

...

 

As I have said, we don't possess enough clout, for lack of a better word, to cause damage to this planet, even if we exploded all of the bombs and killed all of the occupants including wildlife. The planet would go on and in a few thousand years, life would begin to spring forward again, because the planet will heal itself.

 

As occupants, we can't permanently damage this planet. We are simply too small and even with all of our industrialization, fossil fuel burning vehicles, smokestacks, heat generating plants, and supposed CO2 generation, there is far too much of the surface of the planet that is completely and will always be completely, unoccupied by people. Landmass, which is mostly unoccupied worldwide as evidenced by actual population per square mile, versus the amount of water and polar caps, is so small that the ratio is too great for us to do it, even if we wanted to.

 

 

Hey, sure, if THAT's your definition of harm, then I agree with you. We don't have the clout to render the earth permanently uninhabitable. Well, unless we managed blow off the atmosphere entirely - not sure what that would take. The other planets all seem pretty uninhabited. OTOH, I'm pretty sure we COULD wipe out 97-99% of humanity with the existing nuclear arsenal.

 

 

 

Personally, the suffering and some percentage of death of billions of people constitutes some form "harm" to me. But, hey, we all have our own scale of sympathy..

[JmP6889928]

Different solutions makes sense in different climates. Solar probably isn't that effective in Alaska ether. MA put a wind farm in shallows of salt water bay. I have never looked into the maintenance, but I can't imagine being out at sea is easy for maintenance and I know what salt air does to my boat intern of corrosion.

 

 

 

This lunatic says the seawater is rising . It averages about 3mm a year. I work for a large commercial property insurance company, I don't know what 2018 results were but I am guess it rose again. (It usually is discussed at a February meeting) My company cares about the sea level rising as it affects our flood maps and exposure to liability. Even those small amounts add up over the years and the additional water level compounds with storm surges. My company doesn't take a stance on global warming, just the facts about temperature and sea levels and we look at the trends. The main components of rising water levels is glaciers melting on land and temperature of the ocean increasing adds additional volume. Fresh water glaciers melt in salt water actual displace more volume that salt water, but it is a very minor component of water level.

 

No politics here, I am independent that believes in some conservative and liberal views. In talking politics, its seems like every is against me.

 

You sure don't like Al Gore, I have seen you mention his name more times in this thread that I have in the last 10 years His is just a politician, he isn't the 1st to skew the facts or profit from his position and won't be the last.

 

You're seriously going to tell me the seawater is rising by 3mm per year? And who is measuring 3mm in the entire sea and how are they doing it accurately? 3mm is .117.5" and your insurance company can measure that accurately? I would love to see THAT data. Sorry, not believing in this.

[DrD123]

OK...so first a bit of a history lesson about atomic and nuclear weapons. Tell me the half life of radiation contamination? I don't know how old you are, but the common teaching since I was in school says it's 500 years before anyone can even begin to look at occupation of the contaminated site.

uh, wow... I wouldn't advise giving "history lessons" like that... Half life depends on which radionuclide you are thinking about - some are short, some are very, very long. Making a place inhabitable again is a matter of decontaminating (i.e., removing the nasties from the area) which can be done. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an example of a "we're just learning" sort of device - the devastation possible from a modern weapon and delivery system is dramatically more substantial.

 

Chernobyl is a mess because of the area it contaminated - the reactor is still pretty unapproachable, which is why the current containment structure has been built. They are still working to dispose of the spent fuel (not associated with the reactor core) - kind of a mess as the fuel rods are very long, and must be cut to fit into the dry storage vessels that they are using. Even the cleanup from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was pretty insane - but it's more or less the same thing - you need to clean/remove the contaminated topsoil (few inches), dust, etc. - nuclear cleanup is extremely expensive, and takes a lot of time, but it can be done.

 

No one is arguing that the changes something makes are permanent, but to postulate that we can't hurt/damage anything is just silly. Of course we can (and have) influenced the conditions on the surface of the earth - does that mean it's wrecked? of course not. Using your example of a nuclear war, of course the world would be pretty irreversibly altered - that is not saying that things won't continue, just that they would be very different than if the cataclysmic event didn't happen.

 

In terms of electric vehicles, my thought is that many societies - certainly the US - won't adopt them to any large degree until they are driven to - either due to fuel cost going through the roof/availability plummeting or gov't mandate. It will mean changes in terms of how people use vehicles - and our society doesn't seem to respond well to changes like that. I would guess that a successful replacement technology for the internal combustion engine is going to have to be something that behaves, at least to a degree, in a similar manner - that's why I am thinking the fuel cell driven electric or perhaps a flow battery system (for those not familiar with the technology, it's just like a regular battery in that you have oxidation at one electrode and reduction at the other, however, instead of oxidizing the electrodes themselves, your oxidation and reduction reaction are of species in the electrolyte (be it an aqueous solution or an ionic liquid) - they are pretty cool, and the technology continues to advance - mostly for stationary storage, though)

 

Hybrid vehicles are a good start, as they give manufacturers a chance to play around and see what does and does not work, and address some of the challenges associated with the electric side of things. Maybe they are sort of like a gateway drug to get us to reliable plug in electrics...