28-pound electric motor delivers 1000 horsepower

https://lemmy.world/post/38282904

28-pound electric motor delivers 1000 horsepower - Lemmy.World

Maker website: https://yasa.com/news/yasa-smashes-own-unofficial-power-density-world-record-pushing-state-of-the-art-electric-motor-to-staggering-new-59kw-kg-benchmark/ [https://yasa.com/news/yasa-smashes-own-unofficial-power-density-world-record-pushing-state-of-the-art-electric-motor-to-staggering-new-59kw-kg-benchmark/]

Lol:

The new YASA axial flux motor weighs just 28 pounds, or about the same as a small dog.

However, it delivers a jaw-dropping 750 kilowatts of power, which is the equivalent of 1,005 horsepower.

I feel like we’d need peak horsepower output of a small dog to truly understand this.

A dog’s power output comes from its muscle mass, which for a healthy dog is about 45% of its total body weight. This gives our 28-pound dog roughly 5.7 kg of muscle.

Studies of animal muscle show that the peak power output of vertebrate muscle tissue during a short, explosive burst (like a jump or the start of a sprint) is around 100 to 200 watts per kilogram of muscle.

Now we can estimate the dog’s peak power:

  • Low estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 100 W/kg = 570 watts
  • High estimate: 5.7 kg of muscle x 200 W/kg = 1140 watts

Converting these figures to horsepower (1 horsepower = 746 watts):

  • Low estimate: 570 W / 746 ≈ 0.76 horsepower
  • High estimate: 1140 W / 746 ≈ 1.5 horsepower

So, a small 28-pound dog might be able to generate a peak power of around 0.75 to 1.5 horsepower for a very brief moment.

So this YASA motor is somewhere between 670 and 1,340 times more powerful than the dog it’s being compared to in weight. That’s some jaw-dropping power output.

I’m guessing that would be if every muscle was being used for propulsion at any given time. You’d need to allow for heart and lungs, as well as face, neck, tail muscles that don’t contribute to power output, plus legs don’t provide continuous power as they need to make a return trip.

If we really wanted to optimise a dog for power:weight there are quite a few systems we could do away with. But it would likely result in a less floofy doggo, so it’s obviously not an option.