• fer0n@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’m not a car person, so excuse my lack of knowledge. But do electric cars have/need cooling liquid? Just wondering

    • zurohki@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Some have cooling liquid for the battery and electrical components. Some blow cold air over the battery.

      And then there’s the Nissan Leaf, which just lets the battery cook, knowing that it probably won’t die before the warranty is up.

      Though it’s a bit more complicated than that - sometimes you want to heat the battery or the passenger cabin, and sometimes you want to heat one thing while cooling the other. A good thermal control system can handle moving heat around as well as getting rid of it or taking it from the surrounding air.

      An EV doesn’t produce so much heat that it needs powerful cooling like a gas car does, but it does come in handy if you want to rapid charge a few times on a long trip. You can get away without it if you’re being gentle with the car and live in an area with a mild climate.

    • 18107@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Most electric cars have battery cooling, but the Nissan Leaf doesn’t. It works fine until you try rapid charging more than 2 times in one day.

      I suspect that some high performance cars would also have motor and inverter cooling. This would likely not be needed for regular road cars as the motor and inverter don’t produce much heat.

      • Fogle@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        This is true however for op it’s not something you can or need to watch or keep track of. At least for my car if it detects something wrong with the battery cooling/heating system it will tell you. Otherwise you just ignore it.

    • nogrub@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      yes an electric motor has an efficiency of around 90%(thats what my engeneering teacher told us)(google tells me 64%) means that is the percentage of how much energy is converted to work the rest of that is emmited as heat. a good rule of thumb is everywere where you have mechanikal work you have frction and friction means heat

    • Noito@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have a hybrid Prius (not a full EV) and it actually has two separate coolant reservoirs, one for the gas engine and one for the electric motor, and they both use the same kind of coolant.