Episode 6 of the Australian Power Transmission Podcast
In this episode...
A look
at issues affecting transmissions in electric cars
Thanks for tuning in to episode six of the Australian Power
Transmission Podcast, it is Monday, January 23rd, 2012.
Guess what? You can
email me at ozptpodcast@aol.com or
tweet me @ozptpodcast, or of course, leave a comment on the website;
australianptpodcast.blogspot.com.
I enjoyed the Christmas and New Year break and am ready and
refreshed for what 2012 may bring. The
weather in Melbourne is fantastic at this time of year and I hope that it is in
your part of the world as well.
*The ongoing
European economic downturn has hurt demand in the windpower industry, to the
point where Finnish drives manufacturer Vacon
is looking to shed staff. Vacon also
produces a full range of electronic variable speed drives for industrial
applications but it is the softening of the wind industry that is the major
contributor to the decision, likely to see 60 front office workers go and a
re-think in hours for production staff.
With a global
turnover of more than 330 million Euros annually, Vacon has various
distributors in Australia for its VSD range and there is not expected to be a
change in the supply situation locally.
*After purchasing Baldor
Electric Company at the end of 2010 for $4.2 billion, it was only a matter
of time that ABB looked at how it
could reap rewards from the knowledge of the Arkansas-based manufacturer. The ABB acquisition of Baldor was considered
to be at a premium at the time and invited speculation as to how its new US
business would be structured.
Back in October 2011, ABB and Baldor merged its sales force
for the US market, looking to benefit from Baldor’s existing extensive sales
network. The main stated goal of merging
sales networks is to match the premium efficiency end of both businesses,
however the two units offer competing products in motors, drives and
peripherals so it is inevitable that some will become casualties.
The future of ABB and Baldor sales and distribution thinking
in Australia is yet to pan out, but is possibly going to mirror that of the US.
*Hannover Messe is
coming up at the end of April 2012, with many manufacturers in a supposed
buoyant mood and talking up their exhibiting plans. The Industrial Supply part of Hannover
averages around 65,000 visitors and is without doubt the major industrial trade
fair internationally. Motion, Drives and
Automation will next feature at Hannover in 2013.
April will also see the Drives
& Controls Show being held at the Birmingham NEC, with the European Power Transmission Distributors
Association looking to set up an away version of its Hannover stand. Co-located with six other events, the Drives
& Controls Show is staged every two years and is normally populated by
motor and drive manufacturers, lubrication firms and the bearing game.
Check out drives-expo.com for all of the information on this
one.
*I did a feature
about the Australian car manufacturing industry back in episode three of the Oz
PT Podcast, examining the critical mass of demand required for the industry to
survive. Well, the Holden Commodore has just lost its title as Australia's top-selling
new car, being knocked off by the Mazda
3 in 2011.
It is the first
time in a LONG time that a fully-imported car has been the biggest seller in
Australia, as the shift away from large cars continues. 40,000 Commodores were sold in 2011, whilst
Ford could only shift 20,000 Falcons and the Toyota Aurion is an afterthought.
Although feeling the brunt of the imported challenge, the
locals are looking at hybrids and diesels in small and medium-sized cars as the
best way to face the onslaught. For the
sake of the Australian automotive component industry (and by extension the PT
industry in general), let’s hope they can create some genuine competitors.
Ford has picked
up some backing from the Victorian and Australian governments in something
labelled as a co-investment to help pursue other production possibilities. Senator
Carr – newly-appointed manufacturing minister – has managed to squeeze a
little more cash from the auto giant in the transaction that will help Ford
investigate ways the Falcon can continue to meet emission standards.
GM’s hand is out
for Holden, who after investing $1 billion to get the VE to market is
threatening to shut the doors on manufacturing in Australia. I’m sure they’ll get the cash to keep it going
for another couple of years, although the federal liberal-national coalition
opposition is butting heads with the coalition governments in automaking states
over the issue.
Opposition leader Tony
Abbott and shadow treasurer Joe
Hockey have both backed their policy of slashing support to the Australian
auto industry by $500M from $3.4B, which is diametrically opposed to the views
of the state Premiers of Victoria and South Australia. Creative destruction is loved by the
economists, but on this scale is maybe a little too much for the industry to
handle.
Opposed to the opposition’s auto policy are opposition
parliamentarians Ian MacFarlane and Bruce Bilson, whilst spokesperson on
the issue – Sophie Mirabella, it
non-committal.
Although it is outside the usual purview of the Australian
Power Transmission Podcast, I would like to spend some time talking about
gearing in the new series of electric cars that are coming through from manufacturers. Governments right across the developed world
are looking to non-traditional energy sources for personal transport and
electric cars are high on the agenda for most of them.
There are a couple of major manufacturers who have pushed
internal-combustion / electric hybrids to the point where they are a realistic
option for everyday travel. Toyota’s Prius is obviously the most
well-known hybrid on the market and is the benchmark in the industry, yet
Toyota has not rested on its laurels, conducting further research in the field
with a plug-in version.
The Prius utilises Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive for its
transmissions, achieving something akin to a constantly variable
transmission. It’s not really what I’m
examining in this feature. Likewise, the
Chevy Volt runs a Prius-clone
power-split hybrid design hooked up to a single reduction gear, but I’m more
interested in the pure electric vehicles.
One of the more well-known electric car manufacturers is
California-based Tesla. Since its introduction in 2008, Tesla has
moved a couple of thousand Roadster Ss, which features a 185kW, four pole AC
electric motor. The story of its
transmission is a little more detailed.
Tesla tried X-Trac
for the original Roadster transmission.
X-Trac is renowned as suppliers of transmissions and transaxles for many
motor racing applications. From all
reports, the X-Trac design was capable, but Tesla specced it out as they were
looking for more flexibility.
Tesla then got onto Magna
International to see what they could come up with. Issues with Tesla wanting a dual-clutch
operated two speed transmission proved too much for the relationship – leading
to a couple of court cases and much acrimony.
Magna is not a small concern, with 2011 revenue expected to be around
$29 billion, but that all looks to be sorted now. The first Roadsters to come out featured the
Magna two speed, locked in second gear.
Eventually, BorgWarner
was commissioned to design and supply a single speed fixed gear transaxle,
which they did, opting for an 8.27:1 ratio.
These units were retrofitted to the earlier models and are standard on
all new cars.
Nissan’s Leaf is
a genuine all-electric with an 80kW motor and an in-house transmission
featuring a single speed
reduction gear with a final drive ratio of 7.93.
There have
been a myriad of niggling technical issues with the introduction of the Leaf,
but none of them have been with the transmission which looks to be able to
handle the 280Nm torque demand with no problem.
Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV
features a 47kW permanent magnet synchronous motor, hooked onto the rear axle
and running through a single speed reduction gear.
Tesla’s lawyers were active again, disputing the Fisker Karma, which shares a lot with
the new Tesla Model S. The transmission
employed is known as a ‘Series Hybrid’, where individual motors drive
individual rear wheels, running through
a 4:1 final drive.
Oerlikon Graziano
provides gearing for the Norwegian Th!nk,
a small runaround with a 34kW induction motor.
More famous for their seven speed gearboxes in both the new McLaren
MP4-12C and Lamborghini Aventador, Oerlikon Graziano has looked at the
efficiency side of the ledger rather than outright capacity for the Th!nk.
Th!nk goes broke every couple of years, but some new
investors think they can make a go of it in a market where the right product offering
could be just around the corner.
UK-based Antonov
has been at work on a three speed transmission, aimed at keeping motor RPM in
the high-efficiency range. Antonov have
been working with Smith Electric
Vehicles who have a range of commercial vehicles, and although the motor
power is nowhere near that of the Tesla, the multi-ratio flexibility looks like
something that may take hold.
The baby REVAi isn’t
really a car – more an enclosed scooter – featuring a 13kW AC motor
From an industrial gearing perspective, some manufacturers
have entered into joint ventures with automotive specialists as they search out
brave new worlds in the ballooning sector.
SEW-Eurodrive
linked up in February last year with Brose
Fahrzeugteile and set up a jointly-managed partnership with a view to
designing, marketing and manufacturing drives for electric and hybrid
cars. Based in SEW’s home town of Bruchsal,
Germany, and split 50/50, the partnership sees SEW provide Dr. Jochen Mahlein
as Chief Technology Officer and Brosen’s Eckhard Seibold as the Chief Financial
Officer.
Brose specialise in automotive mechatronics and already has
an established network of customers in the industry, whilst SEW is primed to fuse
both existing gearing knowledge with researched ideas.
Not to be left behind, Bonfiglioli
has partnered with Italian FIAT subsidiary Magneti
Marelli’s powertrain division to design a hybrid drive for agricultural
equipment. The Magneti Marelli motor and
Bonfiglioli drive is integrated into an application-specific hub unit -
normally the domain of hydraulics – and features a Kinetic Energy Recovery
System. There is little doubt that
scaled versions of this drive could be used in the automotive sector.
In nearly every case, manufacturers have chosen to run the drive
through the electric motor and send it through an offset single reduction, much
in the same way as industrial single reduction gearboxes. The three speed Antonov design is a little
more traditional in the automotive sense, as are some designs that haven’t got
any traction yet.
The electric car sector is primed to explode in the next
five years. The major auto players can
look after themselves on the manufacturing side, but will search out component
suppliers with either off-the-shelf offerings or potential partnerships.
Thanks for joining me for episode six of the Australian
Power Transmission Podcast. You know how
to hunt me down: Email, twitter, the
web.
I hope you’ve been enjoying the podcast, plenty of downloads
and the Libsyn stats have also been encouraging. It’s good to know that people care about
industrial mechanical power transmission.
I’ll look forward to your company in two weeks.
