[XAP]Bob wrote: ↑18 Jul 2021, 12:17pm
PDQ Mobile wrote: ↑15 Jul 2021, 10:08am
Mick F wrote: ↑12 Jul 2021, 7:50pmGearboxes are antiquated and consigned to history synchro or otherwise.
It seems to me you overlook in your inimitable way a couple of things.
One is work!
A gearbox does WORK. Hard pulling work.
It may be the reason your hybrid is not plated to tow. The transmission is not strong enough to withstand long periods of sustained torque?
This is done, made lightweight in effect, in the interests of economy.
But it will bust if you stress it too hard.
Work and reliability are important to some of us.
I have an old tractor here, 70 plus years and counting. It works fine and the gears are as sweet and precise as the day it left the factory!
It has produced, in it's lifetime, a lot of food. Thousands of hours of ploughing etc.
There is nothing inherently inefficient about a well designed oil bath gearbox.
Or IHG!!! Though derailleur wins slightly on the efficiency side, but not on durability.
Pays your money ... etc.
An electric drivetrain doesn't need a gearbox - because it doesn't suffer from the limitations of an ICE.
The only reason (motor vehicle) gearboxes exist is that infernal combustion engines can't do decent torque across a wide rev range, and are particularly rubbish at low revs. There were a few gearboxes in the era of steam power, but again you can get torque at zero/low revs, so you don't need a clutch and gearbox.
The torque provided by an electric motor is available across it's entire rev range, from zero to thousands of rpm, and both the torque and rev range can be designed to be whatever is needed for a job.
Your final transmission is completely independent of the power source, and yes, I am sure that lightweight transmission parts can't take silly torque, but that's like complaining that a moped can't plough the field - it's not meant to.
Of course one does not expect to plough with a moped.
And it was not my point.
Any reduction gearbox will increase torque at the output side and that is independent of power source.
There may well be instances where some reduction of output from an electric motor is an advantage. A smaller motor doing the work but more slowly. A rechargable drill often has two speeds by dint of a small gearbox.
Frictional losses in oil bath gears are not great
My point was more about durability really.
That remains something of an unknown for electric vehicles but I suspect the electronic complexity will not see them into the long term very well. We shall see.
The wider point is that while I really like electric as a motive power, trains (which we as a nation have still failed to fully electrify) draw power directly from an overhead wire are fantastic.
Feel that torque!!
Battery technology I am more sceptical of.
And like it or not 50% of UK leccy still generates CO2.
Throw in production energy costs in manufacture of what, if they follow current vehicle trends, have become throw away items, then the green credentials look rather more suspect, IMHO.
I have become, in old age, deeply mistrustful of the word "eco".