The ST200 is the amazing Ford Fiesta ST with an expensive cherry on top
Cars
Hey folks!
Brian Cooley from On Cars taking another one of your e-mails about high tech cars and modern driving.
This one comes in from Carson C. who says I've noticed that a lot of electric cars like the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Bolt that's on the way don't have geared transmissions.
Why is that he says and would be an advantage for them to have one in those cars?
Okay well Carson the reason why electric cars don't have transmissions is because electric cars have electric motors Electric motors deliver power and torque very differently than a combustion engine.
And frankly they don't need so much of a crutch, which is really all a transmission is.
An electric motor has so much torque almost from one RPM, it doesn't need to rev up.
To get a lot of torque, which is what really moves the car.
As a result, it doesn't [UNKNOWN] low for us to gear to get going.
The second thing is electric motor has a very wide range of RMPs and functions and much wider than your average combustion engine.
As a result, it doesn't necessarily need second, third, fourth.
To allow it to have to hit a sweet spot.
It has a big fat sweet spot and therefore it needs fewer gears to focus on a certain range of RPMs.
Let me give you an example here.
Here's a chart of an electric car versus a combustion engine car.
As you can see from the very beginning the electric car has Gobs of torque from almost zero rpm, where the combustion car has to rev up to get to its torque peak.
Now, both begin to putter out, in terms of their mid torque, as you get into the thousands of rpms.
At this point, the combustion engine is done revving and about to hit redline and blow apart.
And then it has to go down, catch a gear and rev back up again.
That's where the electric motor car can typical just Keep revving, for thousands more RPM.
So there's two big reasons, the electric car doesn't need a whole smattering of gears.
A wide, fat band of torque of up here and a whole lot of RPM range even beyond that.
Two main Major ways that it can dispense with most gears.
Most electric cars will have just a very simple planetary reduction to match rpm to road wheel, but that's not the same as a big old six, seven, eight, nine and ten column gearbox.
[SOUND]
