HeyTheresTony
Junior Member
What do you think of the RamCharger?
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My biggest take from this is how is the general public going to afford this technology W a powerplant that also has Cam, tappet and oil cooler problems, are they going to have a backup engine for it!!!Very interesting article. The writer sure makes a case for the truck
You mentioning this tells me all I need to know!!!I want to be very clear that I'm asking from actual curiosity and not from an adversarial position. I do not care about any political anything here. We are talking TRUCKS.
This motor trend article says Rivian has "direct drive transaxles" - https://www.motortrend.com/features...e-review-trans-america-trail-off-road-part-2/Somewhere, I think your units are way off and you are not comparing apples and apples.
For example, in the Rivian the front two motors (together) produce 413 ft-lbs of torque and the rears (together) add another 495 ft-lbs. TOTAL torque is 908 ft-lbs or about 1230 Nm (not 12,000 Nm). In contrast, the 5.7 Hemi has around 410 ft-lbs.
Torque delivery is much different insofar that the electric engines can have 100% of their max available instantaneously.
In your "grunt pulling" scenarios, the electric motors have the potential to be "much better" than an ICE engine getting torque to the ground sooner at slower speeds, but in practice both the EV as well as the ICE will be limited by tire traction. (In theory, the EV may once again have a small edge because of the added weight.)
At least one possible answer: Compare using HP. Torque can be both misleading and a tad meaningless, HP cannot as it's not subject to gearing.
Lot of what ifs there. What if we use a 80k truck for real truck stuff, like maybe a 2500 or 2300. Or, what if we use a tractor. I just don't see many people using a 1/2 ton truck for that what if kind of stuff. The Ramcharger will do a lot of the stuff a 1/2 ton does now, just a little differently.I think the RamCharger is cool, my sister has a BMW i3 REX which is also an electric vehicle with a combustion engine that turns on after the battery has been depleted for effectively unlimited range (as long as you can keep putting gasoline in it) .
There are some problems with it but those are specific to that car not to the general idea of the drivetrain.
Does anyone know what the actual torque of the RamCharger is, final drive at the wheels? I'm asking because so far every EV truck is quoting torque at the wheels and they're really not comparable with how conventional, combustion engine trucks are rated.
I want to be very clear that I'm asking from actual curiosity and not from an adversarial position. I do not care about any political anything here. We are talking TRUCKS.
For example Rivian quad motor AWD trucks have supposedly "14,000 Nm" of torque at the wheels* which is about 10,325 ft-lbs which sounds impressive until you calculate the torque at the wheels for any combustion powered truck. To save you the effort a 4th gen Ram 1500 hemi 4x4 w/ 8 speed transmission does over 20,000 ft-lbs before factoring a little overrun on the torque converter which would boost it even more.
The other drawback on a quad motor system like Rivian is that each wheel only gets a quarter of that torque; or nearly (the rear motors are more powerful than the fronts on that truck specifically) so each individual wheel can only see a quarter of the total torque. If you were pulling a stump out of the ground for example a 4 cylinder 1998 Kia Sportage can send 5689 ft-lbs of torque to the two rear wheels while a Rivian R1T if the quoted 14,000Nm total torque and 54% rear bias is true, can only do 5575 ft-lbs to the rear wheels. In other words if you had a stump to pull or a stuck tractor you might get a better result throwing bubba in the back seat of a 90s 4 cylinder Kia..
A 4th gen Hemi Ram can deliver 4 times that torque to the back wheels. If your anti-spin diff isn't worn out you could probably deliver most or all of it to a single rear wheel.
Regarding any kind of daily driving this doesn't matter because you've got all four wheels on asphalt and the only weight you need to accelerate is your truck and its contents. It doesn't matter much off-road either if your only goal is to move the truck itself.
Here's the BUT..
What if you want to extract a stuck vehicle or piece of equipment. What if you want to pull a stump out of your front yard. What if you're collapsing an old garage that's too dangerous to disassemble up close. What if you're pull starting an old tractor. I know these things might sound far out if you live in a condominium but there's still a few of us in the world who own trucks because we need to use every inch of them and I'm curious if Ram's built this truck for us.
* I have seen the Rivian quad motor quoted as having 14,000Nm of combined torque, which is 10,325 ft-lbs however I have also seen it printed that the motors use "direct drive" and do not incorporate a reduction gear. The rear pair is rated (together) 495 ft-lbs and the front pair (together) is rated 413 ft-lbs which is less than 10% of the above figure and I find hard to believe because a direct 908 ft-lbs at the wheels is almost golf cart numbers
All motors make the same horsepower at 0 RPM regardless of how much torque they produce.
Yes. And thus are doing no work. The moment they so much as twitch the work performed is universally called "power" be it measured in HP, KW, or etc.. Simple fact: The one that delivers the most HP will perform the most work each and every time. If that work is done too quickly one gears it do suit.
Mind you I assumed you cared about the work they could actually do and were seeking ways to evaluate same. Perhaps I was wrong. Best of luck in however you figure it out!
I think it all has to do with how much power is delivered to the motor, ie. the controller programming - most (all?) EV's have controllers on them.I sincerely don't have any idea why this is causing such controversy.
A BMW CE-04 electric motorcycle has 42 horsepower and my walk-behind rototiller has 5 horsepower and with sufficient traction my tiller would pull three of those bikes from the instant I squeeze the bail until it runs out of gas 3 hours later. Can you guess why?
Actually don't answer that I'm not going to bother reading this forum anymore I'll just wait till the truck ships and check it out then. Seems like every time I try to participate here it turns into an argument and I'm too dumb to figure out why.