Reckon

Thank you - had to take a second drive with the wife, but sold us once we did. Love the technology package with the digital cluster and enlarged console screen (very versatile and can customize the digital cluster to appear how you want, including having the navigation show up there). The vision package and comfort/convenience packages are great add ons as well. The heads up display is a laser beam focused one so polarized sunglasses aren't an issue! Will post pics next Thursday or Friday (get car back on Wednesday).

rob-2

My word Jon, I understand you'd need to get a motor rated for more power. It's not nearly as complicated as getting an ICE motor to run at ever higher compression over a range of temps.

JonBoy

I think it's pretty obvious you've never spec'd or operated an electric motor before, that's for sure. If you're going to get an electric motor rated for more power, you're going to have to pay quite a bit more to get one that can handle the additional heat load (assuming you're keeping the general shape/packaging the same).

With an ICE, you could bump displacement (in the same packaging/size constraints) to get your power boost, which is far simpler than running higher compression and dealing with the possible pre-ignition/detonation issues. Very simple (and common). They did it with the F20C to F22C in the S2000.

mosesbotbol

It sure is a sharp car and hopefully the masses get to experience what JLR has to offer! This is going to be such a big seller. I haven't seen one in person yet. It's also on our short list to replace our S60 when the lease ends. We are also looking at the XE.

You must be one of the first to own F-Pace in US!

rob-2

Electric motors are available for sale at a wide range of operating specs. That was rather my point. Sometimes I wonder if you speak English or are just generally a disagreeable person.

If a car company wants to produce more power out of a ICE they can, boost (tubro/sc), up compression or add displacement. The first two a decent amount of work, and reasonable increases in complexity they've been refining over time.

If you want more power out of an electric car you're really talking about electric motor that can handle that, assuming the current is not able, cooling for your battery pack/motor and matching wiring specs. Then you tweak your computers with some parameters to support. It's so easy that you could even stream an update out to a fleet of vehicles if all the hardware in your car was up to the challenge.

You can go buy electric motors from multiple suppliers btw who have been developing them for other applications.

By making the electric vehicle sound complicate really does it a disservice. They're very straight forward. I've obviously simplified my technical explanation in hopes you might p1ss off and move along.

Reckon

It is very sharp looking and all the reviews give it a pretty good thumbs up. Haha, not the first, but I am the 3rd one from the dealership here. The other ones were custom pre-ordered. One was an R-Sport (which includes a very good looking aero package for $$$$) and the other was a custom order Prestige similar to mine but Quartzite colored (a very nice brown) with only the tech and black packages included.

JonBoy

Let's make it easy: Have you ever spec'd an electric motor in your life? If so, for what type of application?

Gasoline engines are available in a wide spec as well. It's relatively simple to bump up power for an ICE via tuning, breathing improvements, displacement bumps, etc. OEMs do it ALL THE TIME and the aftermarket does it as well. Heck, most manufacturers slightly "muzzle" their engines up front so that they can make moderate gains over the life of the engine without making any major (costly) changes. You can literally take the exact same engine and make a modification to the intake and exhaust and tuning and make moderate increases in power. Very cheap (relatively speaking).

Electric motors in cars aren't like electric motors commonly used in most other industrial applications. They're compact, "pancake" motors (in the case of in-line hybrids) and they're nowhere near as simple to just "bump up the power" because you have space and heat capacity limitations that affect the transmission and engine.



The above photo shows the NSX in-line electric motor. Do you believe that's a simple upgrade to get more power? I hope not, given the space/packaging constraints (and that's just the start). An update to that electric motor would require some serious re-engineering of the rest of the (RWD) drivetrain.

Outboard, independent electric motors for AWD systems (a la Tesla S or NSX), as shown below, are simpler and usually would be easier to upsize but they still have packaging concerns and limitations. You don't just "get a bigger motor" or "get more amps to that puppy," as you so eloquently put it. The motors are still package-limited, the wiring may not be rated for higher amperage and then the cooling requirements for the batteries and motor itself have to be supported, as well as the higher drain on the batteries. Speaking of batteries, you obviously lose range with higher power motors, so without a battery upgrade you've reduced the usability of the vehicle.



Bottom line: it isn't "so easy that you could even stream an update out to a fleet of vehicles if all the hardware in your car was up to the challenge." For starters, the hardware is almost certainly not up to the challenge, especially for continuous use. It might survive once or twice...but it ain't going to hold up to what is effectively "abuse." Secondly, electric vehicles will have hardware controls that are analog (fuses/switches), as backup to the digital controls, so unless those are upgraded, you can't just "stream an update" to allow more power to the motors. They'd trip that hardware.