Ford Mustang Lithium EV

So Ford just released a prototype Mustang EV with 900hp, 1,000lb-ft of torque...  And it has a 6 speed manual while the GT500 doesn't so people are mad, haha.  I'd drive this in a heartbeat.

https://jalopnik.com/ford-gave-this-electric-mustang-a-manual-but-not-the-sh-1839672422

Wonder if that 6 speed will find it's way into the GT500 in the future? Strange to put a manual transmission in an EV. Wonder what the reasoning behind it was.

infinitenexus said:

 And it has a 6 speed manual while the GT500 doesn't so people are mad, haha. 

Yes, a lot of people don't seem to understand the difference between a one-off show car prototype-ish thing and a series production car that needs to meet all kinds of standards and have a warranty.

Also I think a lot of people don't realize that putting a 6 speed manual in the GT500 will make it slower.  And right now with all the competition, I doubt Ford wants to release a version of this flagship vehicle that's slower than the current one.

The EV with the manual is kinda strange though.  They're generally 1 speed cars.  Perhaps this is to further develop the transmission?  

I can think of a few reasons:

Experimenting with gear ratios and power usage per mile is way easier

Developing a crate motor as a drop in replacement for an ICE is possible

It was easier to modify just the front subframe then it was to design new parts for a one off

But really, I'm just guessing. They're not idiots. There was a reason.

The reason could simply be "all these enthusiasts are complaining about the lack of manuals. This will shut them up, for a minute"

I imagine it would be pretty fun, manually rowing through the gears but with a 900hp electric motor.  That would take one hell of a clutch, though.

Why would you need a clutch? 

(rev matching should be pretty easy to do in the electronics)

Enthusiasts:  GIVE US MANUAL 900HP MUSTANG!!

Ford: Well...ok. HERE!!

Enthusiasts:

Ford:

Maybe it's an attempt to lure the gas powered gear heads over to the idea of electric?  Looks like it might have worked if people are complaining that it has a manual instead of something like, "Ford's ruined the Mustang by making it electric?" 

-Rob

I think that's cool as heck personally. Even without the manual gearbox.

This is also one of the first EVs with an axial flux motor.

I think it's neat but I'm certainly not in the market for a new anything. I like old tech but the growth of the EV market is something neat I like too follow 

If it has a manual, does it  make phoney engine sounds too?   RuurrrrrrrrrRRRRRR shift RuuuuuRRRRRRR  etc.

Otherwise, shifting makes no sense.  Sometimes people just say they want something as excuse to not want it.  Like "if it only had this, I would buy it", and you give them 'this', and then it is "ok, but I would buy it if it only had THIS", and so on and on.   

As I recall, Tesla tried a two speed manual with  rev sync and  it didn't work good enough and kept the 1-speed.

In reply to nimblemotorsports :

One would have to think it makes a noise, otherwise it'd be very hard to shift. 

My only experience in manually shifting an EV car came via Forza Motorsports 4. The Leaf was one ev option, and if you want to be fast in Forza, you have to manually shift cars with a clutch. Don't ask me why they let you swap in a 6 speed race transmission, but it proved very tedious to constantly monitor not only the road ahead, but also your tachometer. 

Hmm, so my Volt seriously runs out of steam at higher speeds. Like 0-30 is a punch in the kidneys but 50-70 is pretty sad. Wouldn't a transmission help that?

dculberson said:

Hmm, so my Volt seriously runs out of steam at higher speeds. Like 0-30 is a punch in the kidneys but 50-70 is pretty sad. Wouldn't a transmission help that?

With 900hp and 1000ftlb I don’t think it’s running out of steam

I've driven a very low power manual trans EV and my old boss built one that I'd like to drive. With low power shifting makes sense, I think? I wouldn't mind bolting 300whp up to the 5 speed in my bmw...

Despite my troll posting above, I really like this. I agree that the manual is odd and probably has more to do with simplifying execution than improving the drive.

I think EV pickups and sports cars will be AWESOME when they get the tech right. I think eventually they'll work so well that any of us driving IC cars will look like the guys with the hit-and-miss farm engines do to us now.

While I love manual transmissions, there is a rather nice quality to EVs like Teslas where at basically any speed you can punch it and it just rushes forwards.  In a sporty car like a Mustang on a track, you wouldn't ever have to worry about what gear you were in, you just focus on gas and brake.  The manual kinda detracts from that aspect.  Plus as Jordan said, without engine noise you'd have to stare at a tach or have a big shift light or something to know when to shift.  I imagine they did it "because it's neat" and the enthusiasts want a manual, so Ford was like "Well here then, plus it's got 900hp!" and they'll never make it.

Just a thought, the article said the car will be used as a development platform. It is possible they are using the modified transmission to do some real world reliability testing for high horsepower cars that do not use an electric prime mover. Yes there are transmission dynos and test rigs, but the whole real world thing finds different sorts of issues in systems.

I have driven a few electric conversions with manual boxes and even with low power, the gearbox was just a simple way to get the power from the existing engine location to the wheels. You only really needed two gears: pick a forward gear that gets your intended top speed, and reverse.

It’s a Webasto powertrain. I think it’s actually their project, not Ford’s. I think the manual was just the easy button to get it done. The motor did top out at 6000 rpm, so some sort of gearing would be required. They had a stackable battery unit which looked pretty solid.

There was a modular unit teased by GM, you could stack up to three of them and it had an LS bellhousing on the back. 

A gearbox can make sense for an EV - if you only have one speed, then there's going to be some tradeoff between acceleration and top speed. The rev range of an electric motor is wide enough that you may be able to settle on a happy medium for some purpose without a gearbox, but it is a compromise.

For example Teslas have eyeball-flattening acceleration but a relatively low top speed, and cooling problems at higher speeds in part due to the high revs the motor is doing. And then the Lotus Evija has a healthy top speed but unremarkable (for an EV) acceleration, which makes sense for a track-oriented car, but with a gearbox and multiple gears it could've had the best of both worlds in terms of acceleration and top speed, at the cost of the complexity and weight penalties of using a gearbox.

“Relatively low” :) Top speed of the Model 3 LR is 145 mph. 

Really, you only need a couple of speeds. The EV Vanagon conversions use a lockout to restrict the trans to 2nd and 4th. The Mustang would be pretty heavily traction limited in the lower gears. Using that 6-speed box is a 150-ish lb weight penalty with little payback other than convenience. 

There is a company here in Austin, Moment that does electric conversions of classic cars, they've done a 911, Alfa GTV, 280Z, Hilux, and a Delorean.  They keep the original transmission.