Motor wear and tear - during Get Amped circuit

[SCW-Greg]

No doubt there's some answers to this already, via Roadster or other custom EVs pushing the experience. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnCgW5tSsc

But I'm curious about breaking in an electric motor. More-over how hundreds of people over the course of a Get Amped weekend constantly dumping all that juice into motor to test the max acceleration while the car is loaded down with 3, 4, or 5 adults sitting in it (along with a ~4500 lb car). No doubt straining the motor to do its job. And then they take the same car to the next city to lather, rinse, and repeat. Great real world testing for our cars, btw.

And while I'm certain the tech guys at Tesla have factored this load in to the build...

Does the massive amounts of current being dumped into the motor, accelerate wire wear? Or what about the gear loads? to the point that a future owner's manual may suggest any kind of a break-in period, or other suggest proper care of your Model S motor?

[smorgasbord]

Since there is no contact there's nothing to break in. Go to a Tesla store and spin the motor for yourself.

[SCW-Greg]

Since there is no contact there's nothing to break in. Go to a Tesla store and spin the motor for yourself.

I understand electric motors pretty well, since I was 14 creating my own motor/inverters models. The flow of electricity does eventually wear down some electronics (not saying this), electricity is still arcing/flowing through there at some level.

I was just thinking of the loads on this scale (and looking how thin those wires were in the floor demo), and it just made me wonder. It could be a total non-event, but it's just one of those things that piqued me.

[TEG]

I feel sorry for the tires!

Hopefully the battery cells are up to the task...

Not so worried about the motor.

[widodh]

I feel sorry for the tires!

Hopefully the battery cells are up to the task...

Not so worried about the motor.

I think the tire-wear is indeed the worst.

The batteries should be fine as well as long as they are kept cool.

Same for the motor, as long as the cooling system is doing it's job their won't be that much to worry about.

The Roadster is a different story though, that motor tends to overheat rather quickly when you're toying with it. That's due to the air-cooling it has versus the liquid-cooling in the Model S. You can feel the Roadster loosing power when the motor starts heating up.

[ElSupreme]

In my experience you have to worry more about the inverter than the motor. They normally fail first. Integrated circuits fail before copper wires most of the time.

[cinergi]

No doubt there's some answers to this already, via Roadster or other custom EVs pushing the experience. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnCgW5tSsc

But I'm curious about breaking in an electric motor. More-over how hundreds of people over the course of a Get Amped weekend constantly dumping all that juice into motor to test the max acceleration while the car is loaded down with 3, 4, or 5 adults sitting in it (along with a ~4500 lb car). No doubt straining the motor to do its job. And then they take the same car to the next city to lather, rinse, and repeat. Great real world testing for our cars, btw.

And while I'm certain the tech guys at Tesla have factored this load in to the build...

Does the massive amounts of current being dumped into the motor, accelerate wire wear? Or what about the gear loads? to the point that a future owner's manual may suggest any kind of a break-in period, or other suggest proper care of your Model S motor?

They did a LOT of long-term extreme testing to try to overload and overheat the system (they learned from the Roadster). And even with the Roadster overheating and reducing power or shutting down in those same extreme conditions, they've weathered just fine. The Model S, being liquid-cooled, should fare even better.

[TEG]

In my experience you have to worry more about the inverter than the motor. They normally fail first. Integrated circuits fail before copper wires most of the time.

Fans with brushes and capacitors are often the problem areas...
I think the electrolyte in capacitors can eventually break down. And brushes in DC motors wear down...
A failing cooling fan can cause other components to fail due to overheating.
Thankfully model S has a liquid cooled inverter too, so it should be immune to the problems some Roadster had with the cooling fan and air passages getting clogged with debris.

ICE cars tended to use belts off of the idling engine to run accessory pumps (such as water pump, air conditioning pump, power steering pump, etc.) Modern hybrids tend to use small electric motors to power these things now since the gas engine can shut off sometimes. So, even without EVs, the hybrids have help develop good quality aux pump motors. Hopefully Model S has really high quality electric motors on the accessories. For instance you never want the pump to fail that circulates coolant through the battery/inverter/motor.

My old RangerEV had a 12V DC coolant pump which is a common failure item. Ideally the aux pump motors would be higher voltage AC parts. I am fairly sure they do that for the air conditioning compressor, but not sure about the coolant pump...

[100thMonkey]

with both the Leaf's we have owned, it does appear that there is some kind of break-in period where the efficiency increases, but I doubt it's the motor. It was hard to track as the temperature fluctuations also effect efficiency on the Leaf. Wheel bearings maybe, and maybe even the battery gets conditioned a bit on the Leaf over the first 5K miles from what we experienced ... have no idea how that equates with the S but thought I'd put it out there.

[jkirkebo]

Fans with brushes and capacitors are often the problem areas...
I think the electrolyte in capacitors can eventually break down. And brushes in DC motors wear down...

Are those still in common use ? I though most all fans (at least of a certain quality) were BLDC now ?