Most People Have No Clue How Electric Cars Work, But We’re Going To Change That

I’m going to tell you a little story about the launch of the Renault ZOE that, depending on your level of cynicism, might surprise you. Now, I know that you folk have no clue what the hell a Renault ZOE even is. Well, consider it the Nissan Leaf’s cuter French sister…just as intelligent and environmentally conscious, but, well, just more attractive somehow.

The ZOE a small, Fiesta-sized BEV that was developed roughly in parallel with the Nissan Leaf and launched about 18 months after it, in late 2012. You’ve never seen one over on the far side of the Atlantic as it was never federalized (designed for American safety standards), but it’s a pretty big deal in Europe, having been the best-selling EV over here for many years, only recently being dethroned by Elon’s baby 3.

It turns out that I was lucky enough to be the chief engineer for the ZOE, which is to say the person who gets to stay up at night staring at the ceiling and worrying about project costs, Bill of Materials, that goddam supplier who keeps being late, the latest software glitch in the charging systems and whether another coffee would help put him to sleep. Cars take a long time to develop – four years, give or take – and they can be somewhat stressful, so the Press Launch is usually a huge relief. You get to stay in fancy hotels, eat far too much, and finally get to show your baby off to the world’s automotive hacks. Basically, you get paid to talk endlessly about cars for a few days. Sweet work, if you can get it.

But the sweetness of the ZOE Press Launch was slightly ruined for me. Here we were in Lisbon, Portugal, staying in a lovely hotel. The weather was beautiful, the team recce’-d some fantastic roads, there were beaches and far too many of those delicious little Pastéis de Nata pastries that were invented in Lisbon. The car was going great, the assembled journos seemed to like it – in short, all was right with the world. But something was nagging at me, causing yet more night-time ceiling-staring.

[Editor’s Note: David Twohig is a legend in the automotive engineering world, having not just led the development of the hugely important Renault Zoe, but also having worked on projects like the Alpine A110 and Nissan Qashqai. He has a book out called Inside The Machine, he contributes regularly to The Intercooler, and he’s someone I will continue to push to have on these here pages of The Autopian — a website led by an engineer and read by thousands of Ti-89-wielding nerds. -DT]

The Day The Glass Shattered

On the first day I was hanging around the hotel parking lot that we were using as a dispatch area for the journalists to come and go on their test drives. I was just mooching around, chatting to the press, making myself available and being the good corporate soldier, doling our bite-size quotable techy nuggets, and answering any vaguely technical questions. I was standing next to one of the cars with a gaggle of journalists when one of them said “Hey, could you pop the hood?”

My pleasure, says I, and duly opened up the business end of the car. We all did that thing that dudes do – and yes, I am afraid that we were all dudes as the European car industry was pretty testosterone-saturated in those days (still is, truth be told…)– and leaned into the engine bay to check out the mill.

Silence. Nobody said a damn word. No comments, no questions – not even any ridicule. I snuck a glance at the faces around me, and the problem started to dawn on me. Here were half a dozen very experienced automotive journalists. A couple of them were very well-known figures, big hitters in the (Euro) car-scribe world. And the faces were blank. It dawned on me that these guys had no idea at all what they were looking at. They did not know which of the boxes were which. They simply did not recognize the ‘stuff’ under the hood. The various cooling hoses for the power electronics, the orange HV cables and the complex plumbing of the Heat Pump system might as well have been a bunch of spaghetti to them. They were saying nothing because they had nothing to say.

Now, think about that for a moment. You’ve dedicated your professional life to cars, and to writing or broadcasting about them. You’re probably a genuine car enthusiast in your spare time. You may well have built or restored a bunch of cars. You KNOW cars, dammit! Cars are not just a job, they are your identity. You know a gudgeon pin (OK, wrist pin if you really must) from a scraper ring, and your VTEC from your VAMOS.

Now this dude pops a hood and you have no freaking idea what he’s showing you. It’s like the world just stopped. Worse, all your damn colleagues (and rivals) are standing there right next to you. If you ask a dumb question, they will all know that the floor just dropped out of your world.

Honesty, I felt like shit. I was embarrassed, for me, and for them. So I did my best to rescue the situation. I said something clunky like “You know, it always gets me just how small the actual motor itself is – see, it, down there? The thing like a tiny beer keg?” They nodded, sagely. I then guided them ’round the main under-hood components with a cheesy running commentary designed to tell them what was what without them having to ask me anything, stuff like: “And of course, that big box on top with the four big orange cables there is the main inverter, as you know…” etc etc. It was toe-curling, but within 10 minutes or so, I felt that at least these guys had had an EV-101. They started to relax a bit, started to ask me questions, and of course crack some typical EV jokes. The moment passed and I felt a little bit better.

But here’s the thing. It’s now nearly 10 years on, and I think that we’re still not much further ahead. Of course, most people have driven an EV by now. People know that they have Lithium-ion batteries, like the ones in all our smartphones. Folks interested in cars will have heard of permanent-magnet motors and maybe even how BMW just brought out some kind of motor with no magnets in it, however the hell that works.

But there are a ton of other things – these mysterious ‘inverters’, for example, not to mention a whole raft of acronyms like HVJB, OBC, BMS, BDU. But even today, not many folks outside the OEM’s engineering offices know how EVs actually work. I mean really understand how they work – beyond just a vague notion that you connect a battery to a motor and it spins up, like Tamiya RC car.

I mean knowing what the parts are and how they really work. Sure, if you have some technical aptitude, a ton of time and a lot of bandwidth on your hands, there is a lot of interesting stuff out there on YouTube and in the darker corners of the Web with which to educate yourself about EV technology. But it takes a lot of patience to piece it all together.

What We’re Doing About It

But your good buddies at The Autopian are here to save the day. We thought we’d make an effort to compile a series of in-depth technical articles to try to dispel some of the mystery and the bullshit around EV technology. Jason and David have somehow persuaded (and are looking to persuade more) real car engineers to do help with this. What The Autopian plans to do is a series of technical articles that will walk you through the basic EV building blocks, following those pesky little electronics all the way from deep inside the battery cells themselves, through the amazingly complex power electronics to the stator (and maybe even the rotor, kidz…) of the traction motor that turns the rubber on the road.

The Autopian will track ’em the other way too, from the charge-point to the On Board Charger (OBC – that’s one acronym down…) right back up those thick orange wires to snuggle safely in the anodes of those battery cells. Very importantly, we’ll talk about the peripheral systems – HVAC and braking in particular – that are completely different between IC-engined cars and EVs. And – hopefully without scaring the bejeezus out of anyone – we’ll talk quite a lot about safety systems in these vehicles, maybe killing a few myths along the way.

Buckle up, folks, because the Autopian has briefed a gaggle of EV enginerds, and implored them to geek out as much as they want to so this series of pieces should satisfy the hungriest of EV fact-hunters out there.

So, keep tuned in and watch out for this: Incoming! Watch out TOMORROW for my big “How EVs Work” overview. You won’t want to miss it.