Signal Conditioning and Battery-Powered EVs

"Are carmakers up for the challenge?"

Hardly. Overly complicated methods of doing simple things does not improve the design or the reliability or the cost in the long run.

If they want to really learn how electric energy assist works and works reliably they need to start talking to their big brothers in the mining, heavy industrial equipment, and warehouse equipment industries. They have been running diesel electric, battery assisted, and full battery based power and drive systems reliably for 50+ years now and much of it is in what normal public commuter vehicles would consider outrageously harsh working environments.

I have personally seen electric drive Letourneau pay loaders in mines pushing some 450 Hp per wheel off of full diesel generator over electric power systems that run reliably in what would be considered crazy harsh stop and go forward and backward at full power working conditions and apparently still hold up to running 24/7 for months between any major service work. Even on the smaller scale electric forklifts in warehouses do similar duty service with little more than an overnight stay on the battery charger and occasional check of the battery fluid levels.

Lets see your Honda drive 100 feet forward at full throttle stop, back up 100 feet at full throttle and do that 20 hours a day 7 days a week for a month before needing a visit to the service shop for grease job and a wash!

I worked with the Letourneau cranes and jacking systems, same thing tcmtech, it's all about KISS and no good way to store the power. If you ever get to Mobile go see the WW2 sub, it's even got a "W" grid, old man Letourneau built it too. Yes we have the new inverters and AC (you know that better than any of us tcmtech and thanks for your work there) and it's still KISS. GA and stay warm up there

Thats the part I don't get. Keeping things simple is what makes equipment solid reliable and cost effective to manufacture.

I have seen some of the inverter based drive systems and from what I can see is that in the commercial and industrial application they are built nearly identical to the common VFD units I see all the time on manufacturing equipment which are well known for being efficient reliable and very durable without an outrageous price tag attached to them.

Same with the inverter rated induction and servo motors. A buddy of mine has a large salvage yard I work at off and on through the year as a service tech and occasionally I see these compact yet incredibly high continuous horsepower rated servos and inverter rated motors come through on industrial equipment that gets scrapped out. I am talking 150 Hp continuous rated motors the size of a 15 gallon oil drum with matching VFD units not much bigger than a common microwave oven.

The VFD units are typically using common 200 - 250 VAC three phase input that gets rectified to a 300 - 350 volt DC rail. These VFD units also have regenerative or dynamic braking capacity built in as well. To me this just screams off the shelf high Hp highly reliable electric vehicle propulsion system readily adaptable to a 300 - 350 VDC battery system.

The design testing and developing has long since been perfected and at automotive manufacturing volumes the prices would not be any more expensive that what the common IC engines and drive train cost now possibly even less so.

Yes they are.