SmokingMentholsWhy does a car have both a motor and engine?
Jane“Engine” and “motor” are almost the same thing, and when talking about cars are often used interchangeably. However, an engine usually refers to an internal combustion engine (which is gasoline or diesel-powered), while a motor usually refers to an electric motor, as used in electric cars.
My education is in automation and my current job works very heavily with pneumatic systems, so my usable idea of what a motor and engine is are very different from most people familiar with the terms. I would get some seriously strange looks for saying that a compressor engine was bad comparatively.
Typically, people do associate the terms with different forms of power, but they’re really the same thing. A motor creates motion using supplied power. That’s what a car engine does: it uses the chemical energy in fuel to move pistons.
If I understand correctly about your line of work, this is consistent: the supplied power source is converted to rotational motion in the fans. Your compressor engine is also a motor.
If you have something else that turns the airflow into electricity, then you have a generator there, and will need another motor to make stuff move again.
SJ_ZeroMost cars only have an internal combustion engine. People just refer to it interchangably as an engine and a motor.
There’s a small number of cars that have both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, called hybrids. They try to take advantage of the best of both worlds, giving the range of the ICE and the fuel economy of the electric motor.
Some cars don’t have an engine and only have an electric motor inside.
“Engine” is used to describe a device that is sulf-sustaining with a fuel source, and can produce mechanic motion. (i.e. combustion engine)
“Motor” is used to describe a device that converts one type of power into another (i.e. electric motor)
An engine may contain a motor, depending on the application.
However, when it comes to cars, people tend to use the terms interchangeably. If you have a hybrid, you will actually have both (an internal combustion engine, and an electric motor to drive the engine when idling).