| Heat: the Achilles Heel of Today's Motor Vehicles
January 02, 2011
I'm inclined to be a car, motorcycle, outboard, truck, tractor, chainsaw motor freak.
A big thing that has recently dampened my enthusiasm has been the realization that the whole shebang is built on a crappy foundation.
My naturally sensible designer instinct is simply shocked by this. And it's kinda preventing me from taking any motor seriously.
They're just junk, really.
Why?
It's the Internal Combustion dealio that's the deal-breaker.
IC motors are only, what, 20% efficient.
And that's just stupid.
Take any motor and run it. What does it do? IT GETS HOT!
It's WASTING ALL ITS POWER!
And so we have to cool the darn things in all sorts of Rube Goldbergy ways.
If the dang things were sensible to begin with they wouldn't get hot.
I can admire all the handling and functionality. But with motors like these, it's just sad.
Thankfully, it seems like the Electro Motor might come and rescue us.
Electro Motors are 80% efficient! They don't get hot! (Not nearly as much.)
Hybrids are cool, too: the only thing that IC is good for is GENERATION. Put a small generator aboard your rig and use it to charge your sweet new LiPo batteries. It'll be small and not spew too much heat. Otherwise, keep the darn thing shut off.
Maybe some other motors out there run kinda cool, too.
Doesn't a cool motor also not break down nearly so fast? The parts would seem to last a lot longer (unless, I suppose, they're moving inordinately fast or have to be kept to absurd tolerances).
Oh well. It's just a notion.
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