The Expert Podcast

We have talked a lot about electric vehicles and what the potential problems are for more universal adapt or adoption of these types of vehicles in the marketplace things like charging capacity network of charging stations maybe even the sourcing of materials to build the vehicles one thing we can say about electric vehicles is there's a huge advantage to the vehicle design and potential styling of electric vehicles.

Here is a cutaway of a chassis of a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle this happens to be a truck but it works the same you have a frame four wheels and then look at you have in the front big engine transmission this has a steering wheel too but even if you take away the steering wheel this big bulk of mechanical equipment is right in the front of the vehicle in front of that even there's a radiator which is hugely inefficient from an aerodynamic standpoint you have to build a sloping roof around this and the first thing right in front of your car is a big block that blocks the wind also makes you have to build everything around this so your driver's compartment seats cargo capacity all has to go behind this.

Compare that to and this is what's needed for a vehicle this this vehicle could run and drive by itself it doesn't really need anything more than this to operate you need creature comforts and you know some other um components for structure but this is what the mechanics of the vehicle is now let's take a look at an electric vehicle this is all you need this is the battery and this platform on the floor the highest things sticking up are the wheels the motors that drive the wheels are in these little enclosures around each wheel each wheel has its own electric motor it's not a gas engine so this is a more clean slate of design you can build anything around this you could put the seats right in the front for the operators of the vehicle you can put anything you want anywhere you want because there's no preconceived requirements to build around something like this right.

You have to build around this engine transmission and you even have to keep this part clear because from this transmission to the rear wheels there's a drive line the drive shaft connects the back of the transmission to the front of the axle can't see it in these pictures behind this frame but that's all in here you also need brake lines that you'll see in this you need a gas tank exhaust system you see over here in a vehicle that's electrically powered you need none of those the brakes are built into each individual it's recharging brakes it recaptures the energy you don't need exhaust system you don't need a drive shaft you have much more design flexibility with an electric vehicle.

In some cases the battery itself enclosure becomes the frame the stiffness of the frame the structure itself if you look at this vehicle you have to have boxed metal frame components and cross members to make this vehicle structurally sound electric vehicle it's like a go kart you can build anything you want on top of it in fact if the steering is steer by wire the steering wheel doesn't even have to be pointed in a certain way to kind of angle down if you notice the angle the steering wheel goes right down to where the steering links will connect to the wheels with a steer by wire you can have the steering wheel right against the floor and the wires connect to it this is an advantage of electric vehicles admittedly there's still a lot of things that need to be overcome.

But the design opportunities flexibility and creativity that exists for an electric vehicle desi architecture is unlimited you can build anything you want you can have things stick out the back more out the front you can keep the center of gravity low you can build up and put cargo underneath one thing we haven't seen yet is a driver's seating position that's elevated maybe there's another false floor three feet or two feet above this maybe the floor is the same height as the top of the wheels and below that you have cargo what would that be like you know people like to sit up high in trucks and suvs well let them sit up high.

Right now most electric vehicles sit low because they're taking advantage of this low floor architecture but what if you could jack the floor up a little higher and use this underneath for storage or cargo might be a good way to have shipping you don't need to put the cargo in the back or the front or have what's called a frunk a front trunk or have a bed in the back you can have extra storage underneath kind of like a bus or an aircraft and still have plenty of room for passengers above the architecture capabilities are unlimited only by the creativity of the designers and this is something that i'll bet we'll see electric vehicles have layouts designs and use cases different than what we've ever seen in gasoline or diesel internal combustion engines that have to make compromises to be built around this very complicated and quite frankly inefficient engine placement.

Because an internal combustion engine is a big piece of metal that sticks up and you also have to keep in mind the heat load you know this engine throws off heat so you can't just put it right next to the passengers because it gets hot you have to have a firewall in between you have flammable liquids and hot oil and coolant and noise all happening here you have to separate that so ideally the passengers go farther back with electric vehicle you have none of that that you have to worry about.

So watch for some tremendous electric vehicle designs to come in the future let us know what you think in the comments do you agree disagree what are your thoughts.