When buying a new energy vehicle, would you still care about what kind of motor it uses?
Do you still pay attention to the powertrain when buying a car these days?
The power unit, which was once the first choice for many people when buying a car, is almost invisible in electric vehicles. Consumers will only pay attention to the number of motors, whether it is a single motor or a dual motor, but they may not care much about the brand of the motor or its parameters.
Recently, luxury supercar brand Koenigsegg announced the specifications of the electric motor it developed for its new car. The motor measures 135.5mm x 381.5mm x 383.3mm, has a volume of 13 liters, weighs only 39 kg, but boasts a maximum power of 800 horsepower, a maximum torque of 1250 Nm, and a maximum speed of 8500 RPM.
However, no consumer can intuitively understand the performance of this motor. If it were a gasoline car, the difference would be immediately apparent. For example, Mercedes-Benz's M139 engine is a 2.0T inline four-cylinder turbocharged engine with a maximum power of 421 horsepower and a maximum torque of 500 Nm, which is twice the performance of a typical 2.0T engine. Even without mentioning the difference between the engine and the driver, consumers can tell which engine is superior.
To understand why electric motors are no longer as important in electric vehicles, we must first understand why engines are so crucial in gasoline-powered vehicles.
The heart of a gasoline-powered car
For a gasoline-powered car, the quality of the engine directly affects the car's reputation. It can be said that since Karl Benz manufactured the world's first automobile in 1886, the relationship between the engine and the car has been inseparable. In more than half of the century-long history of automobiles, the focus has been on how to improve engine performance.
For consumers, the engine affects most aspects of the driving experience. Whether it's fuel economy or driving comfort, the engine has a direct impact, not to mention the most obvious aspect: power performance.
These things can be learned before buying a car. For example, fuel economy. Any car sold in China will have fuel consumption data tested by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Regulatory agencies can directly provide a result for consumers to refer to.
As for comfort, we have to mention the three-cylinder engine, which is disliked by Chinese consumers. Whether it is the early Xiali or Ford and Nissan that have used three-cylinder engines in recent years, they have all been criticized by consumers for using three-cylinder engines, and even experienced a decline in sales.
In terms of power performance and fuel economy, three-cylinder engines are in no way inferior to four-cylinder engines. In fact, because they have one less cylinder, they can achieve stronger power with lower fuel consumption. For example, in the Toyota GR Yaris, the 1.6T three-cylinder engine has 272 horsepower and 370 Nm of peak torque, which is stronger than a typical 1.6T four-cylinder engine.
Meanwhile, automakers have also tried various methods to reduce the vibration of three-cylinder engines, such as adding balance shafts or vibration damping and sound insulation materials to eliminate the impact of three-cylinder engines on the car interior. However, as the years of use increase, the vibration damping materials age, and engine maintenance is not in place, this vibration will become obvious again.
For a vehicle to operate stably, engine maintenance is crucial. This is why all gasoline-powered vehicles come with a free first maintenance service from the manufacturer, which mainly involves changing the engine oil and checking if the engine is functioning properly.
After that, owners of gasoline-powered cars began to perform routine vehicle maintenance every six months to a year. Such maintenance requires both time and money, but it is also necessary to do this routine, because if the engine maintenance is not done properly, it may result in increased fuel consumption and vibration, or even engine failure due to cylinder scoring. Repairing the engine is a considerable expense, since the engine accounts for about 15% of the total cost of the vehicle.
That's why the engine is considered the heart of a gasoline-powered car—it's not only functionally important but also very expensive. However, in electric vehicles, the change in power sources has reduced the importance of the electric motor.
Heirloom motor
The invention of the electric motor actually predates that of the engine. As early as 1821, Faraday created the world's first experimental electric motor. After Tesla invented the alternating current motor in 1888, the structure of the electric motor was basically fixed. The stator and rotor still exist even after more than a hundred years, and the efficiency of the electric motor has remained above 85%.
Even the current electric vehicle craze actually appeared as early as the beginning of the 20th century. Back then, engine performance was far inferior to what it is now, and gasoline was not yet produced in large quantities. Electric vehicles became the preferred choice in the market at that time because of their noiseless, exhaust-free, and smooth and comfortable features. According to data, the number of electric vehicles in the United States at that time was 38%, while that of gasoline vehicles was only 22%.
However, as oil was discovered and extracted in large quantities, gasoline became cheap and readily available, gradually phasing out electric vehicles and making them a thing of the past. Recently, a joke has been circulating about electric vehicles: "Is there a liquid that can fill up a car in 5 minutes and make it run 1,000 kilometers?" In that era, gasoline was a revolutionary innovation. Now, developing electric vehicles seems like turning back the clock.
In fact, even after more than a hundred years, the structure of motors has not undergone major changes. The structures of the mainstream permanent magnet synchronous motors and AC asynchronous motors on the market are not much different; they are still stator-rotor structures.
Because this structure has been around for a long time, its operational stability is far superior to that of an engine. Engines are affected by the external environment during operation; air and oil make an engine an open structure. However, electric motors do not have to consider these issues and operate in a relatively sealed environment, requiring no additional maintenance.
This relatively simple structure makes the cost of motors very stable and the threshold is low. Many people may have personally wound motor coils when playing with four-wheel drive cars in their childhood. With the advancement of industrialization, motors used in automobiles can be machine-wound, and the production cost has dropped significantly. At the same time, the differences in various aspects of the produced motors are very small. Even motors of the same type produced by different brands are basically the same as long as the type and power are the same, and there will be no differences like those of engines of the same displacement.
The cost of an electric motor for a tram is only about 10,000 yuan, and the total cost of the powertrain, including other components, is only about 30,000 yuan. Furthermore, these components can be combined and used together, accounting for a small portion of the overall vehicle cost.
Now let's compare the Tesla motor, currently the best-selling electric vehicle, with the Koenigsegg motor mentioned earlier. The Tesla motor measures 228.6mm*228.6mm*228.6mm, has a volume of 9.4 liters, weighs 45 kg, has a maximum power of 275 horsepower, a maximum torque of 404 Nm, and a maximum speed of 5000 rpm.
Although the performance of individual motors varies greatly, Tesla can achieve similar performance using three motors in the Model S Plaid, while the cost is certainly lower than that of Koenigsegg's motors.
When you can achieve the same effect with just simple addition, who will care if your process is different from the other's? Moreover, the stable and simple structure of the motor means that it does not require much attention during use. This means that no one will care whether the motor is healthy when using an electric vehicle, because it is too stable compared to the engine, so stable that you can forget its existence.
So it's not that electric motors are unimportant that they are overlooked by new energy consumers, but rather that electric motors are reliable enough that they don't need to be valued, just like when buying gold, no one cares where the gold was mined.
