- You've probably seen that leaked footage
of the mysterious electric car test mule
ripping around the skidpad where the cameraman,
Larry cheng was hiding behind two
comically, skinny trees,
and the car stopped perfectly in front of the camera.
- [Larry] What the (beep) is this?
- Well, by now the full release video has come out
and we obviously know that car was the Mach-E 1400.
Regardless of questionable marketing tactics,
it's clear that this car is insane.
It's got 1400 horsepower.
It's got independent power to the rear and front wheels.
It's got an other-worldly electric whine.
(tires screeching)
So I wanted to know more about this car.
So I called up Vaughn Gittin Jr. and he told me about it,
but there was one thing he wasn't allowed to tell me.
And that's how much torque it makes.
No problem Mr. Vaughn Gittin Jr.
Keep your secrets, that's okay.
So I did my own calculations.
What I found out was mind-blowing.
How does this thing make more torque than four V8 F-150?
And what the heck does T-Pain have to do with all this?
Well, let's find out.
(soft instrumental music)
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(beep)
To start out the Mach-E uses
three-phase AC induction motors.
It has three motors that power, the front wheels,
and four motors that power the rear wheels.
And these motors are YASA P400 R motors.
And what's cool about them is that they're stackable
similar to three rotor or four-rotor rotary engine.
You can stack them together while sharing a common shaft
in order to produce more power.
The technical name for them is axial flux motors,
but some people call them pancake motors
because they're thin and they have a very large diameter.
You can stack them like flapjacks.
You know, who loves flapjacks uncle Jay loves flapjacks
and French toast, I cook it four times a week.
Get at me if you want my recipe.
Each motor is only 4.2 inches wide.
So in the rear, you have a motor setup
that's only 16.8 inches in length
with a diameter of only 12 inches.
Roughly 1900 cubic inches, weighing in at 250 pounds.
And because they weigh less and take up less space
their placement in a vehicle can be more ideal.
So with axial flux motors, the copper windings
inside the housing are arranged in a way
that allow for smaller form factor.
It's kind of like a regular old V6 motor versus VWs VR6.
Still has six cylinders
but they're just arranged differently.
By optimizing the location and orientation of the coils.
You get a motor that produces an equivalent amount
of torque and horsepower in a much smaller package.
Each one of these motors makes 160 kilowatts of peak power
at 700 volts.
One kilowatt is equal to 1.36 horsepower.
So each motor gives you around 217 horsepower,
868 horsepower in the rear, and 651 horsepower in the front
for a total of 1,522 horsepower.
And because they're lightweight.
They have a ridiculous power to weight ratio,
the five-0, and the Ford F-150 makes 395 horsepower
and weighs 444 pounds.
That's 0.88 horsepower for pound.
Now the motors in the Mach-E make 3.5 horsepower per pound.
That's almost four times as much.
Now, if you notice before I said
a total of 1,522 horsepower,
so where does 1400 horsepower come from?
Well, with any motor, you can never be 100% efficient.
You have friction and heat losses.
There's actually peak efficiency ratings
for these motors and it's right at 96%.
So when you factor that in, it puts the horsepower figure,
right above 1400 horsepower.
Now, what about the torque grading horsepower ain't much
without that torque.
Well, as I said, Ford, wouldn't tell me,
but we're gonna figure it out ourselves.
But first, we have to understand the full picture.
We have to look at how these motors get their fuel.
And in this case, it's from lithium-ion battery.
The reason electric cars today are even feasible
is because of lithium-ion battery.
It's really the only practical battery technology
that can provide that amount of energy
an electric car requires,
but not all listening and batteries are created equal.
There are lots of different types
built for different purposes.
Part of the problem with lithium-ion battery
is having to manage heat, lifespan,
costs, discharging capabilities.
For the Mach-E 1400 they use a lithium,
nickel, manganese, cobalt, oxide battery,
or for my chemistry buffs, LiNiMnCoO2.
The 1400 uses thousands of these battery cells,
which I'm going to call, NMC cells to make a pack
with a capacity of 56.8-kilowatt hours.
A bigger battery pack will have a higher number
of kilowatt-hours and it will hold more electricity.
But that doesn't tell you all that much.
In Ford, like I said before, they're pretty tight lip
about the specs of the battery.
So how can we quantify it into something that equates
to performance?
Well, with a little tiny little teeny bit of math
and a little bit of guesswork,
we can actually calculate some more important metrics.
So to do this, I'm going to look at a Tesla battery.
It's comprised of 16 individual modules.
Each module has 444 batteries
that are made up of 74 cells wired in parallel,
with six of those voltage cells wired in series.
Each voltage cell is 3.6 volts,
and when you get six of them wired in series,
you get 21.6 volts per module.
Now, when you wire those 16 individual modules together
in series, you get 346 volts.
Great, now each module weighs 55.8 pounds
for a total of 892 pounds.
Let's just round up because numbers rule my life
and they gotta be even.
It's the 900 pounds and we get 0.38 volts per pound.
Now I know the Mach-E battery weighs 1500 pounds
because Vaughn Gittin Jr. told me.
And if we assume that Ford is operating at the upper limit
of it NMC cell at 4.2 volts, instead of 3.6 volts
like in the Tesla, that's a 16.6 increase.
The Mach-E battery is producing peak voltage,
right at 680 volts sick.
Now we have this number, but what the heck does it mean?
Well, think of voltage as speed.
The more volts you have, the faster you can spin the motors.
And interestingly enough, if we look at the electric motors
used in the Mach-E, those YASA P400 Rs,
they make peak power, right at 700 volts.
So it's safe to say that we're in the ballpark.
But if voltage is speed, what about current?
Well, rotational speed is proportional to voltage applied,
and torque is proportional to current pull.
So the faster you want to accelerate,
the more torque you need, and the more current
needs to get dumped.
So for the purposes of this video, current equals torque.
Now let's hop on the old Jerry bus.
Actually, no, we don't need to do that.
Can you give me that, drill?
So let's say that the motor inside this power drill
is an AC motor.
Now if I put no load on it and I want to get to spin faster,
I just pull the trigger.
And when I do that, it increases the frequency of the motor,
and the motor spins faster.
Now, what happens when I put a load on the drill
by putting my hand over like this to like stop it, right?
Well, without getting into a lot of complex things
like back EMF or slip or other induction motor concepts,
the more load that you put on it, the more force you need
to overcome that load.
So the motor will draw more current producing more torque,
which will overcome the load of my hand,
trying to stop it from spinning.
(drill motor roars)
Now,
(drill motor roars)
don't do that.
It's really dumb.
One of the great things about an electric motor
is that it can generate useful torque over a very wide
range of rotational speeds.
That's very different from a gas or diesel engine,
which needs to build up speed to produce more torque,
look at the torque graph of an EV versus ICE.
One is like this.
And one is like this.
Now the component of the Mach-E that is regulating
all that speed and torque is the inverter.
That verdict is like a carburetor, but instead
of air and fuel, it's dishing out bolted and current,
it's a pretty complex piece of equipment
that has a few main functions in the Mach-E.
Now, the first thing it does is take direct current
from the battery and converts it into alternating current.
The second thing that it does is it phases that current,
the motors in the Mach-E are what's called
three-phase AC induction motors, meaning they operate
on three separate alternating currents,
which are offset from each other and time.
So the inverter and the Mach-E doesn't produce
just one AC output, it produces three.
And you can see here that there's a two-way connection
for the DC input, a positive and a negative terminal
and three connectors for the AC cables
that feed the motor.
And in the Mach-E, each motor gets its own inverter
for a total of seven inverters.
The inverter also has what's called a VFD,
which stands for variable frequency drive.
So to change the speed of an AC motor,
you need to alter the frequency.
That's what the VFD does.
And finally, the inverter also does something called
region or regeneration.
Now, when you take your foot off the pedal,
the motor becomes a generator,
which since charged the battery,
it also does something in the Mach-E
and that's called braking.
Depending on their controller settings,
the Mach-E control the amount of braking applied
when you take your foot off the pedal.
You want 10% braking when you lift off no problem,
or you want to go on the other end of the spectrum
and lock up the wheels, sure.
They can do that too.
And remember, this is a testbed for Ford.
So they could program this car to be a one pedal car
using region as the only source of braking.
Okay, so that is how energy is stored
and how it is converted for use.
But what about the torque?
Did we ever figure out how much torque
these things are making?
Okay, let's do that right now.
I've teased you long enough.
So the peak torque for each motor is 370 newton meters.
That's 273-pound feet of torque.
Again, we have seven motors at 96% efficiency.
We're at 1800 pound-feet of torque,
and that's the motor torque.
That's the torque that matters.
And to put that in perspective, a 20, 20 Ford F-150
with the biggest engine option, but 5.0 V8,
it produces 400-pound feet of torque.
So when I mentioned that the Mach-E 1400
makes more torque than four F150 is
I wasn't clicked meaty as being real.
So you might be asking yourself, did uncle Jim
mentioned, T-Pain at the top of this?
But T pain did help design the sound of this car,
which I think is pretty cool.
A big hangup with internal combustion engine lovers
is the lack of sound, EVs make.
And I get it, there's nothing quite like the
sound of a cross-plane, VA rumble.
And knowing that Vaughn Gittin
and Mr. Tallahassee pain himself
developed the futuristic sound for this beats.
It's what Vaughn described as their interpretation
of what the car of the future should sound like.
Pipe through to military spec speakers that
you can hear over a mile away,
which is pretty neat.
I mean, you'd want to hear this thing coming
(tires screeching)
I want to thank Ford performance and Vaughn Gittin Jr.
And RTR for talking with us about this car.
There were a ton of nifty things.
They engineered on this thing that we didn't even get
to go into.
The Aero alone could house an entire episode.
I suggest you go watch his video of him and Kim block
ripping this thing around.
We'll be back next week with another B2B hit,
like hit subscribe.
Bye for now.