how many motors ?

[WReed82]

Hi Folks,

How many motors are in an I-MiEV?
(Updated)

Thanks for the additions to the motor count! :
) Drive
) Battery pack purge blower
) ColdcClimate servo to re-direct cabin air to battery pack
) AC freon pump
) Brake booster vacuum pump
) ABS Anti-lockBrakeSystem pump
) Front and rear windshield wiper motors
) Windshield washer pump
) Electric heater water pump
) Radiator fan motor - is this part of the AC system?
) HVAC blower
) AC/Heat/Vent air director
) Four windows
) Power steering
) Power mirror motors, per mirror - one up/down, one left/right ?
) Factory entertainment/navigation unit cooling fan motor, CD spinner, CD load/eject
= About 24 motors.

Partly what I'm curious about is what motors are unique to electric cars.
What I see are:
) Drive
) Battery pack purge blower
) Cold Climate servo to re-direct cabin air to battery pack
)) Electric heater water pump (am guessing some cars with ICE 'infernal combustion engines' also have these)
)) Motors for coolant valve(s) ? again, probably some ICE cars have these.


"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
(Based on quotes from Albert Einstein)

How simple can a car be and still be safe to drive?
I prefer hand-crank windows, manual door locks, mirrors, and heater/AC controls.
I don't need an entertainment/navigation system in my car.(A radio can be useful.)
In my opinion, the I-MiEV is so light on the front end that it doesn't need power steering.
My 1982 pickup has three electric motors - for the heater blower, the
windshield wipers and the windshield washer pump.
(The engine drives the diesel injection pump, radiator fan and water pump, and
provides vacuum for the brake booster. It doesn't have power steering or AC.)
> > AC sure can be handy for clearing fogged up windows in the summer.
> > I don't need anti-lock brakes, but the traction control that comes with ABS is useful on
steep, bad roads here in the mountains, and two-wheel-drive is much simpler,
less expensive, lighter and more compact than 4wd.

Thanks and good health, Weogo

 

[Don]

I think the windshield wipers have a motor and so does the rear window wiper, so there's two more

Don

 

[siai47]

Well, there are at least a few more. There is a radiator fan motor. In addition to the brake booster (vacuum pump motor) there is an ABS pump motor. The battery pack in all cars has a purge blower motor. If you have the cold climate package or DCQC, you get a servo motor that redirects cabin air to the battery pack. Of course you have a HVAC blower motor. If you have factory navigation, there are a couple of motors in the head unit including a cooling fan motor. Power mirrors? I can't remember but there might be more than one coolant pump or motor driven coolant valves in the system. Most likely, still missed one or more.

 

[siai47]

Yep---missed after re-reading Don's post---Windshield washer pump motor.

 

[Don]

The battery pack in all cars has a purge blower motor.\

Do they? My two SE Premiums surely do - You can hear the motors kick in as soon as you plug in the cars to recharge, but the SE we bought new has never done this - I assumed it didn't have the vent motor in it, and only cars equipped with DCQC came with it???

Don

 

[siai47]

Yep, all cars have the purge blower in the pack. I have had the pack out of a cold weather package only vehicle, one with DCQC and finally one without either. All had the purge blower. On the base car without either package, the harness going to the pack had the wires in the connector to mate with the blower connector on the pack. The blower and all of its internal components along with the filter were all present. The fact that I could hear the motor run on startup lead me early on to believe that all cars had the ability to use my mod for getting the cabin air into the pack. After buying a base car, I found out I didn't research it properly with lead me to buy a totaled I-MiEV to get the parts I needed to make the modifications. The blower is useless in the base cars as there is nowhere for the makeup air to come into the pack that the blower is trying to remove. It's hard to believe it will soon be a decade passed since I first started messing with these cars.

 

[siai47]

By the way, as far as the OP's request, almost all the motors in an EV are common to motors in ICE cars. Motors like the blower motors are usually variable speed pulse width modulation (PWM) motors. The fixed speed blower motor in the pack is in fact a PWM motor similar the HVAC system blower motor. Valves and damper motors usually use servo motors so the the position of the items they are attached to can be monitored and adjusted to a specific point of travel. Motors used in windows, power seats (not I-MiEV) power mirrors or the like may be just simple DC motors or may be servo motors if position (Like memory seats or mirrors) is also required. The biggest difference between the EV and ICE motors comes with the drive motor. Most are a specific design crafted for the vehicle. Some cars like the original Tesla's and the I-MiEV used induction motors with an AC/DC inverter to provide three phase AC to the motor from the DC battery pack. The next step up is a brushless DC motor that uses a controller to control the speed and rotation of the motor. These can have the controller built in or remote based on size. PWM motors are in this class. A lot of the larger motors use an encoder to tell the controller which direction the motor is supposed to rotate. PHEV's and Hybrids also use specially designed motors that are unique to the type of transmission design being used. In the case of the I-MiEV, it used an off the shelf forklift drive motor---and that is unusual in the current EV arena. I know you weren't interested in things like door lock solenoids, however they are actually a linear motor. It's all in semantics. Many people refer to engines as reciprocating devices and motors as rotary devices but in reality the names are interchangeable. So does a Mazda with a rotary "engine" actually have an engine or not?

 

[Don]

Yep, all cars have the purge blower in the pack. I have had the pack out of a cold weather package only vehicle, one with DCQC and finally one without either. All had the purge blower.

Since you're way more familiar with the differences in the packs than most of us . . . . how hard would it be to drop the pack from a non DCQC car and install that pack in an SE Premium with DCQC? Our original SE that we bought new has a much healthier pack than either of our SE Premiums which we bought used - They were both leased vehicles which I assume sat for a year fully charged before they ended up finally being leased . . . . and then we bought them a year later when the lease was up. I would really like to do some pack swapping if possible, before I cull the collection from 3 cars to two

Don

 

[bradleydavidgood777]

73