Lightyear One - from solar racer to commercial product

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Sounds like you need to cut down a bunch of trees if you want to save the world.

There are a lot of places that don't have many trees. There are more grasslands than forests - and grasslands hold more carbon per acre than forests. Because grass is 80% roots, while forests are about 50% roots. And grass is very dense, and it grows much faster than trees.

[redpoint5]

...and as I've always said, if I get more bang for the buck having the solar panels on my roof feeding the grid than on my car, I'd get way more if I installed it on a roof in AZ.

[oil pan 4]

I'll be cutting down trees and grass won't grow so well under the ground mount panels.
Saving the world by cutting down trees and killing grass. That's the way to do it.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I was experimenting with putting solar panels on vehicles back around 2010. Not just a solar panel, enough to accomplish something like powering 12v accessories.
A large company like Toyota doing it now doesn't impress me much.

They've already marketed a production 'Ra-Ra' solar car in Japan.Enough PV to power the entire car.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I tried to dig some. Looks like the only vehicles hub motors are really used in are bikes, very slow moving very large machinery and concept cars.
If they are used in a car application, they still don't appear to last very long.

This is not a hub motor, but it looks very interesting ... and argues against what Lightyear are doing.

Story https://newatlas.com/ree-modular-mob...83fd6-90241222

Reference https://ree.auto/technology/

I like that you can configure as many wheels on the vehicle as you like. .. And the vehicle itself only needs to supply battery power, a speed reference, and a direction signal to the wheels. It looks like the speed can be different for each wheel to accomplish skid-steer, not that you'd likely want to.

I expect that the wheel modular subsystem is going to cost quite a bit. But changing out a wheel module with a new one, then running diagnostics on a test bench ... sounds pretty good!

Perhaps I'm reading more into the data than there is ... I tend to assume that others implement technology similar to how I would implement it .. and I project from there

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by thingstodo

This is not a hub motor, but it looks very interesting ... and argues against what Lightyear are doing.

Story https://newatlas.com/ree-modular-mob...83fd6-90241222

Reference https://ree.auto/technology/

I like that you can configure as many wheels on the vehicle as you like. .. And the vehicle itself only needs to supply battery power, a speed reference, and a direction signal to the wheels. It looks like the speed

Meh, lacks information

Next compact electric motors make a lot of heat, where does it go?

The photos of it are lax in detail and make the wheels look like 24” + rims
Maybe not very compact

[NeilBlanchard]

The Lightyear One has been tested in a wind tunnel, and it has a Cd less than 0.20.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news...erodynamic-car

[oil pan 4]

That's nice.
Now all they need to do is forget about the ridiculous hub motors and build a car.

[NeilBlanchard]

The hub motors are more efficient, and you can't just slap in conventional motors, without a lot of redesigning.

[oil pan 4]

At 70,000 miles the only drive line maintenance my leaf has had is 1 by me possibly 2 alignments. A set of tires and a transmission oil change.
The oil change is optional since I read about a leaf that had 160,000 miles. But the guy said "the transmission had been making noises".

Do we know if the hub motors are going to last that long in the real world?

The hub motors being a few more % efficient than a leaf or teala doesn't really matter when when it wears out before 50,000 miles.