Electric motor: will gears still be needed?

maggio 20, 2021

The electric motor is the new frontier of the automotive industry, but will gears still be needed? In recent months, we have heard more and more of electric mobility and sustainable development, which is certainly a good thing given the conditions in which our planet is pouring. But have we really ever wondered if the problem derives from transport and not from the mass and serial production of industries in general? Money is every company's priority, but principles should be too. Now, sustainability has become more of a market and marketing trend than a unifier of good and healthy principles. In fact, we have been talking about electricity as a solution to climate change for more than ten years now. Already in 2009, the European Union had prepared a directive according to which by 2021 a good quantity of electric cars in circulation should be reached. Now underdated, everyone is racing to electrification in order not to incur heavy penalties. Once again, everything is driven by money and not by shared values. After all, the planet has begun to take an interest in a pandemic, when all the balances have been destabilized and nature has shown the impacts of human activities.

Where is the problem of managing an immediate switch to the electric?

Surely the problem is not in the technology used for the electric motor which was invented in the second half of the nineteenth century and used for most of the public transport we know today. Batteries and the volatility of renewable energy are the answer to this question. If the automotive industry has always made school in history, in terms of lithium batteries, those who are the masters are mobile phones first and the increasingly performing smartphones later. Renewable energy has also been talked about for at least fifteen years, but, of course, its technology at the beginning was a privilege for a few. Today partially more accessible, but still difficult to implement.

So can the electric motor be zero impact?

Nothing that derives from human activity has zero impact, therefore not even transport with an electric motor. In fact, the idea is to considerably reduce emissions by looking for ways to make them less harmful to the environment, but also to people. As we all know, batteries also have a life, at the end of which they must be disposed of. As long as it comes to smartphone batteries, we now know how to handle them, but when it comes to larger batteries, the problem is equal. In this regard, one can only think in a circular perspective, thus recovering all the components of the batteries including lithium and manganese, for which a specific technology present only in China and Germany is required. As can be easily understood, this is not enough to compensate for the ever-increasing use of batteries.

And PM 10?

PM 10 is also one more reason to support the above theory that everything generates impact. If it is true that the electric motor itself eliminates combustion emissions, the energy that powers it still comes from this system. In addition, while greatly reducing PM 10, therefore the fine dust generated outside the combustion, 25% remains from tire wear caused by abrasion on the asphalt during braking.

So will gears still be needed?

Surely the motor will no longer need gears, so analyzing the question superficially this could be a problem. But in reality, it is not because of gears will continue to be used to manage the torque and rotation speed much higher and sudden than those generated by the internal combustion engine. In reality, the electric motor is not so different from the petrol engine, in fact there remains the need to use cylindrical gears or planetary reducers. The only difference is the noise which must be totally eliminated by using a surface finishing treatment on the gears. In addition, the gears must be much more resistant and accurate, because they will have the task of reducing the engine speed.

Fortunately for us, the world of gear manufacturing will take a long time to go down, G.S.I. believes that capturing the signals of the market is essential, in fact it is starting to propose itself on the market for the realization of prototypes of mechanical transmissions.

Electric motor: will gears still be needed?

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