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January 14th, 2013 - 4:55 pm
How do you improve on the all-electric Fisker Karma sports car?
Strip out the stupid battery and stuff a 639 horsepower Corvette engine all up in there.
True story.
How do you improve on the all-electric Fisker Karma sports car?
Strip out the stupid battery and stuff a 639 horsepower Corvette engine all up in there.
True story.
Sweet! I’ll bet that thing is a honey.
What pisses me off is that a properly-designed hybrid drivetrain should be better than a Corvette engine. At least in a $100K car. They should be dialing back the torque on the electric motor to avoid ripping the tread straight off the tires. It should have a “launch control” function that feels like an F-15 going vertical. It’s just a matter of buying enough copper and iron.
Can’t anybody play this here game?
Don’t buy the hype. There’s no such thing as huge, instant torque from an electric motor doing any significant degree of work. Not unless you like rather expensive power controllers reverting to their base elements with great frequency, anyway.
What works (briefly) on go-karts does not work on cars in the real world.
You can’t design around physics. The reason the internal combustion engine thrives, and will continue to do so for our lifetimes and beyond, is that there is no more efficient, cost effective solution to doing a great deal of work over large distance. It’ll be the only game in town until someone figures out how to build a megawatt-class hydrogen fuel cell for around five grand, as opposed to the several hundred thousand they currently run.
Incorrect.
There’s plenty of examples of electric motor putting out huge amounts of torque at low speed. There’s a reason why railroads are powered by diesel-electric locomotives–what we’re calling “hybrids” now.
Batteries suck. Electric motors (and their controllers) do not. I’m not talking about your grandfather’s variable frequency drive. Modern vector-control drives can operate motors at their peak output and protect themselves from overheating, but you’ve got to buy enough silicon (and enough copper and iron in the motor) to put that torque out.
Weight is the enemy of virtue. The way to improve on a Corvette engine is by force-feeding it air… see ZR-1.
Here’s a very positive review of a Tesla S sedan from gearhead Adam Carolla.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TE4VjC7gKYo
and the downside is zero to work in 3.2 seconds