Electric motor musings.... Drive Shaft replacement

[michaelplogue]

I been thinking recently about different ways to convert existing ICE cars to electric. Most that we see replaces the engine block with an electric motor, and now we are seeing cars being produced with wheel motors. The downside of just swapping out the motor is that you will still have some loss of energy via the drive shaft. With the wheel motors, one would require special engineering and electronics to get the multiple motors working together efficiently.


But I was wondering: How feasible would it be to make a long, tube style motor which could replace the existing drive shaft of a car? This could be something that would be relatively simple to install. And I could imagine what sort of power a three to four foot long, 4" radius motor could produce (or several shorter ones connected via a common shaft). This would completely free up the engine compartment for additional batteries.

Thoughts?

 

[vanilla ice]

How fast does yer run of the mill RWD driveshaft spin? Torque may be a problem for this type of design. Deffo too high on a FWD where theres no reduction after the shafts. Most cars you would want to convert are FWD nowadays. On RWD I guess you could do a custom rear end with super high reduction. Securing it to the chassis would be interesting also since axles have to work thru different angles as the suspension works.