Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson has opened up about Lucid’s battery pack. The automaker recently launched an all-new series called Tech Talks that will share some of the key details behind its EV technology. The video below is the first episode. Rawlinson focuses on the battery pack.
Rawlinson noted that the Lucid Air Dream Edition received a 520-mile EPA rating and that he wanted to share some of the technologies that enabled the company to make this achievement. Rawlinson noted that he wanted to progress the narrative more toward the average person who is eager to learn about electric vehicles and how they operate. He started with energy and power, noting that these are often misconstrued.
“Energy, really, is the work done, my old physics teacher would tell me. Have I got the energy to walk up that hill? Have I got the energy to get to that position? But a younger, fitter guy than me would be able to run up that hill and get there faster. So he’s able to expend that energy in a shorter time. Why? Because he’s more powerful.”
The video is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn about EVs from the perspective of an average person. In fact, I think that it could help to clear up some common confusion for those struggling to understand why kilowatts are used in EV terminology and how they relate to horsepower. Rawlinson pointed out that this is important to understand before getting into the battery technology side of things.
Rawlinson points out the relationship between kilowatts and horsepower. “One horsepower, as determined by James Watt many, many years ago, is 746 watts. So, a horsepower is about three-quarters of a kilowatt. It’s actually the same thing — just a different term for it.”
This, he pointed out, is power. How it relates to energy is through a unit called kilowatt-hours, or kWh — or, as he wrote in the video, kWhr. This, he explained, is the energy that is inside of a battery pack. He also explained why it’s multiplied by hours.
“That links power and energy through time.”
The next term he uses is joule, which is the scientific unit for energy. One watt, he explained, equals one joule per second. To highlight the importance of this, he used an apple, which weighs around a tenth of a kilogram or about one Newton.
“If I take this apple and I place it on the floor, and I pick it up from about a meter to this table and place it on the table, we’ve moved one Newton through one meter and that defines what a joule is. And if I do that in exactly one second, I’ve been exerting a power on that apple of exactly one watt.
“So how do we link that joule — that tiny amount of energy of moving that apple up — to how many joules there are in our Lucid Air battery pack?”
The math, Rawlinson pointed out, is simple. You can watch the full video here to dive in further.
I think that Lucid’s decision to create videos for the average person is a great way to get them excited about electric vehicles, and I admire how he explained the math and science behind the basics of energy and electric vehicles. I enjoyed the video and I think you will, also.
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