UKenGB

Mounting the entire electric powertrain up front, in place of the original ICE is I believe a poor idea, having to keep the driveshaft running the length of the car. It also intrudes into the potential battery space up front which means more space has to be found for batteries in the rear. It's really better to take full advantage of the 928 being designed for a transaxle and put the Drive Unit at the rear and batteries up front.

Bigfoot928

with an engine replacement you would still get to row thru the gears. that would be a huge thing for enthusiasts.

bronto

Exactly. Also seems like it would better preserve the 50/50 weight ratio.
OTOH, there has to be a reason that modern EVs have ditched conventional transmissions. But I don't know what that reason is.

fiatrn

"OTOH, there has to be a reason that modern EVs have ditched conventional transmissions. But I don't know what that reason is."

The electric motors are so flexible, they make power from zero to over 10,000 rpm, so they don't need additional gears.

Speedtoys

You dont have a rev limit...within reason. The tesla drive units spin 14-18000RPM.

Speedtoys

But then you have to dial back a significant amount of torque to not create fission in the gearbox, assuming you find a clutch that works..and then..why bother at all.

bronto

But power and torque require energy. It stands to (uninformed) reason that if you used an electric motor that produced less power, it would require less energy, and thus with an equal battery you could significantly extend mileage between charges. And using a conventional transmission that same lower power power plant could attain similar driving experiences as an ICE.
And given that one of the major hinderances for more people actually wanting an EV is long "refueling" time, and shorter ranges, this would be a major advantage. Particularly here in the US when commutes are long and frequent road trips are even longer. Until they solve this problem, I have no interest in EVs.
I will be taking a 500 mile road trip next week, BTW.

Speedtoys

It wouldn't be worth the project, to do it at OE power levels. It'd be like that French art project car..where all they did was some ugly headlights and some fiberglass here & there, and they still got to graduate school...but..it's ugly and..only 25% done.

Replace the drive shaft, concert the trans insides to direct drive..straight in, straight out..

UKenGB

It doesn't actually work like that. It takes a certain amount of energy to move the vehicle and that is basically power times the time and power is independent of gearing. So (within limits) gearing makes no difference to range.

A gearbox is required purely due to the deficiencies of the ICE which as we know, produces 0 torque at 0 rpm, whereas an electric motor makes full torque at 0 rpm and almost the same up to its max rpm. So there is simply no need to use a gearbox with multiple ratios. As I said, the only reason they exist at all is to overcome the deficiencies of the ICE.

This 'love' some people have for the (manual) gearbox is a transitory issue. Future generations will have never had to have anything to do with them and will have no love for something that is simply hard work and unnecessary. Not only future generations in fact, but the vast majority of drivers today even. Look at the rise in popularity of the automatic gearbox. Only a very small percentage of drivers have any fondness at all for the manual gearbox with its necessary clutch and in the future the manual gearbox will be regarded in the same way as we currently regard the manual cranking handle to start the car. It was a PIA but used to be necessary and now it's not. Yay!

The electric powertrain provides an entirely different driving experience. Way better IMO as it allows you to concentrate on all the other aspects of driving and all without hurting the eardrums of all around you. For those of us who have realised that, there's no looking back. However that is merely opinion and I know that there are many who will struggle to give up what they know and think they love, despite it all being simply a bodge.

PF

To me "I dont think I love" I DO love internal combustion engines. Most of them have what could almost be described as a "soul" and few have character in spades. Ad the sound and enjoyable vibrations they produce it will be very hard for any electric car to compete.
For everyday cars for poeple who are not into cars sure they do the job very effectively (not considering range and "refuel" time) But if you want a sportscar or something to move your soul they have a long way to go. Yes they have alot of speed but to many of us that is far from "all" we want. Hell I used to have a 38hp 1962 Saab 96 twostroke. Very slow car but very few moving objects I have used have been close to the enjoyment it gave me.

I do not think we have seen the end of ICE engines. There are alot to explore and develope with different fuels etc so I am positive about whats coming.
The EV world has gigantic challenges to adress with environment, lack of materials, infrastructure, range, the list goes on.
If we look at Air, Sea, military, EV gets even harder. No my vote goes to a combination of EV and ICE powered by multiple fuels as Ethanol, ammoniac, hydrogen, synthetic and others.

Petza914

I've rentel electric cars. They do absolutely nothing for me. I want an engine with the sounds, smells, and a clutch and manual transmission.. Honestly if all that are a ailabe for cars int he works were EVs like Teslas, I'd rather just get into some automated driverless personal conveyance that follows signals in the road to get where I need to be as the experience of driving a silent, plain, and boring EV and interacting primarily through a screen simply sucks.

The Eav wave is not inevitable IMO. Synthetic fuels are being developed that have the same zero emissions as EVs, the more people that adopt EVs the bigger the power grid difficiencies get highlighted. It's a dumb technology for something like a car that needs to go long distances.

Speedtoys

A). Leadership that understand your first problem, are solving it with requiring homes to become their own power generation. The grid will not be a choke point in those places as all new construction requires solar (and battery storage is the easy add-on to that) and adding solar to older homes is going as fast as as manufacturing can make panels. So..judging the future by last generations rules, is a losing strategy. But where leadership refuses to see the future, yes, THEY will have a problem here. But this is not _A_ problem, there is a solution that scales.

B). ICE wont go anywhere for a century..they will be around..and in that time, EVs will evolve. Your argument ignores the moon-shot like development of EV technology. The average miles driven per day is 37 as of 2021 for cars in the US. Can you tell me what the market problem here is? Also, the new-car average electric car range in 2023 is 219 miles. That's...well, statistics, but..it's not a glaring problem for the meat of the bell curve.

People have choices, if they drive 600 miles a day, buy something else..yes, at some point you wont have a choice in a new car, but your assumptions is that no additional technology shifts in EV tech will happen between now and then. That's just ignorant of the very recent past..

Lets turn this around..lets say EVs were the industry default since the 1880s all the way to today..and we JUST now discovered oil and how wonderfully energy dense it is. Now..imagine the same arguments about how CLEAN it will be on one side, and how ungodly dirty will be on the other size. Progress has detractors no matter how good it is, and it has promoters no matter how ugly it is. But..i doubt that 100s of 1000s of miles of coastline will be generationally destroyed by EV spills, not to mention the mainland damage in the crude distribution process, that I cant begin to wrap my head around that will have an equal by EVs (lacking strong regulation and enforcement, which means some jurisdictions will become lithium wastelands most likely..but its THEIR choice too).

bronto

There's a huge market problem. Most people - especially poor people - don't want to have one vehicle for commuting and another car for road trips. This problem WILL eventually be solved, but I don't think it will be with the current configuration of plugin electrics. Poor people also have a problem with charging. Where? There simply isn't the public infrastructure for it any time in the near future. Consider the acreage needed now for refueling: you've got about 150k gas stations that are around 1000 sq feet of fueling space that handle millions of fuelings per day, about 10 minutes each. We're moving to a technology that probably - on average - takes a couple hours per day. How much more acreage is that? Not everyone has a garage - again, consider the poor people - so this is an outright impossibility at this time. Lastly, consider suburban and rural areas. These are people who grow your food, after all. Distances are large. The work days are long, and stopping to recharge the pickup often is untenable. My family's jobs depend on ag, and I myself worked those schedules when I was younger. They think Rivians are cool, but laugh at the idea of them as an actual work truck.

Bottom line, EVs are an urban solution for the upper middle class. That's a HUGE market problem.

depami

Solar and wind power are useless long term and wouldn't even be a thing without government backing. They are basically just a scam. EVs are useless with batteries that require charging and are just another government backed scam. Once Tesla (Nikola, not Elon Musk) technology becomes widespread and EVs contain their own power source, sign me up.

Speedtoys

A) It's (broad strokes here) Governments job to incentivize progress at scale.
B) You home can produce and store the energy needed to own an EV..so..have you signed up?

Time moves on, it's a choice to move with it.