Although I really don’t want to admit it, but according to the current general trend, if we want to go out to climb mountains and mountains in the future, I’m afraid we can only drive electric cars.
With the gradual implementation of the National VI emissions, it has long been a certainty that those familiar large-displacement roars will gradually withdraw from the stage of history.
However, none of the current electric vehicles can compete in terms of cruising range, overall reliability, or design orientation. The Cybertruck released by Tesla two days ago seems to have outstanding performance, but all capabilities are still there before it comes into contact with the real car. is a mystery.
However, this does not prevent us from looking forward to what electric off-road vehicles should look like in the future based on the current electric vehicle technology, maybe something good will happen.
If you want to understand the characteristics of electric off-road vehicles, you must first compare them with the most fundamental difference between traditional off-road vehicles-that is, the way of energy. One is driven by an internal combustion engine and the other by an electric motor.
However, the motor drive mentioned here does not include deformed products like the Toyota Hybrid LC200 and Jeep Hybrid Wrangler JL, which are completely forced by policies. Except for better emission data, there is almost no improvement in off-road performance.
Therefore, electric vehicles that can really take you out of the country must be based on the characteristics of electric transmission to develop brand-new products, which is by no means comparable to “old wine in new bottles”.
On a transmission off-road vehicle, if you want an internal combustion engine to drive the vehicle, you need a transmission system including a gearbox-transfer case-front and rear drive shafts-four half shafts-ball cages. It must be known that the thermal efficiency of the internal combustion engine itself is not high, and then through the transmission system layer by layer loss, the final actual available power will only be lower.
And such a complex transmission mechanism will inevitably compromise the stability of the vehicle. After all, for off-road vehicles, the simple truth is the same.
At the same time, in order to obtain better torque performance for internal combustion engine models, the only way is to amplify torque through low-speed four-wheel drive. But in fact, when a high-power internal combustion engine decelerates through the large gear ratio-low four gears, the entire transmission system will face great pressure. A large part of the common problem of the broken half shaft of the old 6.2L Ford Raptor is caused by this reason.
However, the above problems will disappear without a trace on the electric off-road body. The characteristics of electric direct drive allow it to switch between 2/4 drive modes at will only by controlling different numbers of motors through the ECU. Overly complex mechanical transmission system. And this can reduce nearly 80% of failures compared with mechanical transmission systems, and the maintenance cost will also be greatly reduced.
In the future of electric off-road vehicles, the addition of hub motors is likely to bring about revolutionary changes. The four-wheel independent drive allows you to freely choose from 1X1 to 4X4. In addition, with the excellent zero-start performance of the motor, you can get amazing torque even if your speed is slow, which is a miracle in the automotive industry.
In addition, the hub motor does not need to be restrained by the transmission system, and the problems of the length, strength, angle and ball cage of the transmission shaft also disappear.
This also means that you can use suspension structures that were completely unimaginable in the era of internal combustion engines, and you don’t have to consider the drastic angle changes of the transmission system when the wheelbase changes and the corresponding half-shaft telescopic changes, and the modification potential is huge.
If nothing else, the emergence of electric off-road vehicles is likely to directly bring the off-road gameplay to a level that is completely unattainable at the moment.
Of course, the premise of all this is based on the fact that the electric motor can solve the battery life one day, otherwise it is just empty talk.
