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Why can't I use an Automatic Transmission? Last Updated: 01/31/2013 |
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An automatic Can not be used in an Electric Vehicle. Here are some of the reasons why it won't work. 1. Even if it could work, an Automatic Transmission is not very efficient when it comes to transferring the Electric Motor energy to the Drive Wheels. The efficiency loss is somewhere around 20-30% 2. Even if it could work, Automatic Transmissions work off a Vacuum created by a Gasoline Engine. 3. The most important reason it won't work is because of the differences of Electric Motors and Gasoline Engines. Electric Motors produce less power as the RPM's go up. This means that the greater power is generated at low RPM's. Gas Engines have very little power at low RPM's and the power increases as the RPM's rise (to a certain level). But, A Gas Engine is less efficient at High RPM's and an Electric Motor can be more efficient at Higher RPM's An Automatic Transmission is designed to "Switch Gears" as the RPM's go up or to increase power by switching to a lower gear. With a Gas Engine this will make the vehicle more Efficient and give more power when needed. But with an electric Motor this is opposite. The best explanations is, say you are going to get on a freeway and you try to accelerate, an Automatic Transmission will try to go into a lower gear. But, an Electric Motor puts out less power at higher RPM's so you get no power increase and your vehicle will actually slow down. To get more power in an Electric vehicle, you would want to go into a "Higher Gear" to accelerate as you need the motor to slow down to give you more power. It may be possible to "Re-Program" a Auto Transmission but still the efficiency losses don't make it Practical. When using a Manual Transmission in an Electric Car, you usually use just two gears most of the time and don't even need to take it out of gear when slowing or stopping. You can even switch gears without using a clutch as the motor stops when you let off the accelerator. |