Thermostat ?

[StevenWilliams]

Originally Posted by T-Cut

But they can still overheat if the fan fails. They clearly generate enough heat to do so.

TC

Obviously.. However this has nothign to do with the thermostat working or not.. As you pointed out if the fans dead there is no airflow and hence the car heats up..

[kaiser]

Originally Posted by T-Cut

But they can still overheat if the fan fails. They clearly generate enough heat to do so.

TC

Obviously. But let me try and demonstrate by an example.
Electric motors are very efficient. They will convert almost, but not quite, all electrical energy to mechanical energy. They thus generate little heat, and do not normally need much cooling. You can verify that for yourself, you can usually put your hand on an electric motor of say 3 to 4 kW. Try and do the same with you petrol lawnmower.
If they were 100% efficient, they would convert all the input energy with no losses whatsoever, and their temperatures would remain equal to their surroundings.

You can regard heat generation as a very good measure of the inefficiency or inability of a process to generate mechanical energy.

[FrenchMike]

Originally Posted by kaiser

Obviously. But let me try and demonstrate by an example.
Electric motors are very efficient. They will convert almost, but not quite, all electrical energy to mechanical energy. They thus generate little heat, and do not normally need much cooling. You can verify that for yourself, you can usually put your hand on an electric motor of say 3 to 4 kW. Try and do the same with you petrol lawnmower.
If they were 100% efficient, they would convert all the input energy with no losses whatsoever, and their temperatures would remain equal to their surroundings.

You can regard heat generation as a very good measure of the inefficiency or inability of a process to generate mechanical energy.

All right,

That will be the problem whith the future electric cars in winter!
How to warm them ?

Mike

[JohnDotCom]

If you look at the running times for the electric car they run for far less a time at lower temperatures which was shown on one of the TV programs loosing as much as 60% of running time once below -5° C.

Obviously better solutions must be in the pipeline with Nissan etc??