Hello everyone and welcome!
In this video we're going to be talking about whether or not future electric vehicles could be using traditional manual transmissions.
Now this is the second video of a five part series where i've partnered with Formula E to answer questions about electric cars and
this topic was actually inspired by Renault season two Formula E car, which uses a two-speed gearbox
matched with a single transversely mounted electric motor what's super clever about their setup,
is that they actually went a bit old-school and incorporated a manual gear stick,
using cables and rods to switch between the two gears
rather than the pneumatic paddle shifters which other teams are using. Renault's solution is simpler and also lighter as it doesn't require
onboard pumps or air tanks for gear shifts.
But could this be taken a step further and incorporate a clutch as well for street cars
I spent some time chatting with the current Formula E champion Lucas Di Grassi,
who spends his free time engineering electric bikes about this idea.
So we have two questions that we really need to answer in order to discuss whether or not electric cars in the future could be
using manual transmissions. First of all, is it possible? And second of all, is it logical?
now the first question is it possible is a very simple yes, it's it's super easy to do
if for example you just took a traditional manual transmission
internal combustion engine vehicle and swap that internal combustion for an electric motor
everything could work
so you'd have your electric motor that would go to a clutch, that clutch would then rotate a lay shaft, the lay shaft
allows you to choose between these two different gears you've got here. So in this example, just a two speed transmission
which you're using your manual gearshift to choose between one and two you could of course have more gears
all that power is then sent to the rear differential or the driven wheels and that drives those rear tires.
So ultimately yes, it's it's very simple to implement and a clutch could assist you in a scenario like this for gear shifts
basically all you're doing is swapping out the internal combustion engine
for an electric motor of course you have to have the controllers in the battery and that kind of thing, but it could be done.
The other question, is it logical?
And this is probably you know the one that dictates whether or not it'll actually be happening in the future
and it doesn't actually seem all that logical first of all electric motors don't stall like internal combustion engines
so when the vehicle is stopped in an internal combustion engine
you need that clutch because you have a speed differential between your engine
which is idling, lets say 800 RPM, 900 RPM versus the transmission where that isn't rotating because it's connected to your wheels
now with an electric motor because you don't stall you can start from zero RPM,
you don't actually need to you know use that clutch to start from a standstill you can actually just press on the
throttle pedal, the accelerator pedal, and away you go
so you wouldn't need it for the start and ultimately the clutch portion of this isn't really necessary
so electric motors have a lot less you know inertia to them. There's less weight in there
you don't have for example the crank shaft with the counterbalance of
you know the different piston motions
you don't have to worry about a flywheel you don't have to have balance shafts and engines that require balance shafts for vibration issues
so you can remove a lot of weight from an electric motor you
have a smooth torque delivery, so you don't need that flywheel and so ultimately
because it's low inertia it means it can change its speed very quickly
and this allows for very easy shifting if you had an
electronic mechanism to shift Gears
which knew you know which gear you're going to next you could have very quick upshifts and downshifts for up shifts you could
use regen to you know lower that motor speed very quickly, and you could apply some acceleration for rev-matching
downshifts and do that very quickly
so it will be capable of extremely quick shifts because the electric motors are low inertia and can change speed very quickly and
finally which was discussed in the first video of this series you don't actually need gears for a lot of electric vehicles
you can get away without them. They just add complexity, they add weight, they add an efficiency loss,
you've got all this power loss which is going to happen in here when you could just have this directly or just a simple gear
reduction before driving a wheel
and there's a lot of benefits of just matching an electric motor with a wheel and
having one at each corner rather than sending it through this complicated drivetrain where you're going to have
efficiency losses and for street cars where you know you're only maybe accelerating up to a 100 mph tops
for normal everyday cars
one gear is perfectly acceptable for it,
and in fact renault also moved away from using the two-speed manual shifting setup in favour of a single gear for reduced
weight and reduced frictional losses while the more aggressive two-speed setup can allow for quicker starts or acceleration out of low speed corners
it seems the trade-off for the multi-gear setup
wasn't worth it, and Renault's design strategies continue to pay off as they've won all three season team championships in Formula E.
Now does this mean that they couldn't exist in the future for enthusiasts?
I mean perhaps they could and there's no reason really why they couldn't and if you really do think about it even
today looking at manual transmissions, are they logical? They're really not it's really for driving joy
rather than a logical reason because there's quicker transmissions out there there are more efficient transmissions out there
we use these simply because they're enjoyable to drive. So it would be cool to see if perhaps in the future
we do get something with an electric powertrain, but that's also using a traditional manual transmission, so a huge thank you to Formula E,
i'll include a link to their channel if you'd like to see more and
thank you all for watching! If you have any questions, or comments feel free to leave them below.