Chapter 3
While trying to find a good project car, I also thought long and hard about electric motors.
Let me oversimplify.
When you order a new automobile at a dealership, you can get it with a 220 horsepower, 320 horsepower, or 405 horsepower ICE (internal combustion engine). But those numbers are kind of flaky. Your 405 horses are there only when you put the petal to the metal, and you rarely do that after your third speeding ticket!
Electric motors are different. They don't have to rev up to 7,000 rpm to deliver their full power. You get it right now, right away, no standing in line.
Electric car people don't normally talk about horsepower; instead, they refer to the diameter of their motors, normally 8 or 9 inches for a compact car conversion. Electric motors are so powerful that an increase in diameter of just one inch, translates into a real jump in power.
Plan A called for a Warp 9 motor; Plan B will use a Warp 11. Only two inches larger, it is well over twice as heavy at 240 lb. This 240-pound motor will take the place of about 800 pounds of ICE and transmission.
But enough of this boring stuff, time to pull parts!
