Volkswagen ID.4: Electric Motor Teardown and Analysis

hello everyone and welcome back to monroe uh monroe live um today we have something that's a little different it's not often that a company gives us one of their products and says we can talk about it or take it apart and use it on On our show today , I'm going to thank the guys at VW who let us take a look at the id4

electric

motor

. This is a permanent magnet

motor

and I am going to cover many of the details. details but in essence like I say that's very bold of VW I'm very happy they let us do it um but we're going to tell the truth about this and that's the rule so there's nothing I'm going to hide they're not paying me and I'm definitely not going to pay you, so we're going to go over this in detail to show you exactly what's going on with this particular strategy, so the first thing I have to tell you is that This engine has been taken apart and there's a short video that you will see that it shows how all the different parts come from one part.

This product is different than most others. The strategy for Volkswagen was to look for a modular design that would allow them to use this engine wherever they wanted it, so they have mounting brackets and lugs that will allow them to take this engine and put it almost anywhere. suspension system they want to test and adapt this engine, so that's a different strategy than when Tesla has where has Tesla gone and Tesla has put the bracket that the engine mounts right inside the casting. Now this adds more parts but it gives you a lot more diversity and because Volkswagen is so big, they know they have, they're the biggest car company on the planet, so with them, if they want to try to modernize something else or they want to use that engine, let's say on a truck, they don't really need or want something that looks like that, they want to try to stick with something that has common mounts that they can mount the rest of the suspension on, so um uh. the strategy they have is great and we're interested to see what happens when someone looks at a global market rather than a dedicated market like tesla, so we're going to go in and look at each individual area of ​​this

electric

motor so we can give you the best amount of information possible.

Well, let's start with the gearbox. Typically, this is the first thing we're going to accomplish and, as you can see on the right. Here you can see that there is a black thing that is our television. RTV is used as a sealant. I'm a big fan of our TV here and the reason for this is that you never have an escape route. It's a good idea from the point of view of closing this together, but let's talk about the overall strategy, so the big challenge for the big problem that they had with the gearbox was that they had to make sure that they could make the lightest and profitable. gearbox but they also wanted to make sure it lasts the life of the vehicle.

Now I don't know what the useful life of the VW is. Tesla is shooting for a million miles, but I'm not sure if the rest of the car is going to work. be able to survive a million miles so at the end of the day we're looking at this product right here and we're looking at things that are different than everyone else so let's pull this apart a little bit and take a look at what's going on inside so let's look at this shaft here first this shaft fits let's move over here this rod fits into this part of the electric motor so that you have a very precise alignment between the spline that you see here, the female spline and this male spline that you see on the other aside, what does that do?

It allows Volkswagen to use three bearings instead of four, like in most normal products, as you can see here. that there's a bearing down there, normally there would be another bearing somewhere here and then you'd have these two bearings, they're kind of common now, the next thing you notice is that those bearings are quite small compared to the ones you get with Tesla. Tesla bearings are gigantic now, this is one of those things where people make decisions. This product is supposed to be for the life of the vehicle. What is your life versus what is Tesla's life now?

The head of Tesla said in the past that they want to. having a million miles on it that's quite a bit so I'm not sure if they have the ball bearings to do that or whatever but this is a smart design because they can get rid of one of the bearings that would normally be on this type of inches and I don't think I've seen one yet that has just the three bearings, so what does all this do for them? Well what it does is reduce the amount of friction every time you can reuse the friction you are going to increase the mileage and from that point of view this seems like a very good idea.

One of the big problems with bearing reductions usually has something to do with noise and therefore overcoming them. Volkswagen did quite a bit of testing, especially when it came to noise and acoustics, they wanted to make sure it was as quiet as possible and that's why there are very tight tolerances between this shaft here and the female shaft that's in the female socket or the female receptacle that is on the rotor so everything here looks pretty good, we were very happy and Volkswagen was very proud of what they did, however when we looked at the product we found burrs so look down here and you can see that this It's what we would call a plunge cut and it's fine, except in casting we found these burrs.

Volkswagen wasn't happy to hear that and they're looking into it now. This is a pretty good design as far as I'm concerned, it's a cost effective design, I sure like things like the rtv and I like the fact that they were able to figure out how to get rid of another bearing, this one was uh Going to three bearings in one jet engine was a big deal and, um, and when it was made a long time ago, everyone else copied it, I'm sure everyone else will copy this, okay, let's move on to the cooling strategy now.

The cooling strategy here is a little bit different than everyone else, but before we do that, let's talk about what materials were used, so here with these two, these two components here, they are high pressure die cast parts and they appear to 383 or 384 Aluminum sometimes our machine said it was three three to three sometimes it said it was three eight four the center section is a low pressure die cast and it's a three one oh five um, that particular component was examined by Volkswagen and what They thought maybe we could go to an extrusion. That extrusion turned out to be too much effort or trouble mainly because they probably had a lot of machining they would have had to do and sometimes an extrusion will turn out to be heavier, but at the end of the day this is the way they did it, it seems to work very well for them and I'm thinking this is going to be pretty good for them, the strategy that they came up with was where um and we'll show you this in a second, but essentially the refrigerant goes into the inverter, this is the inverter and then from the inverter it goes into the motor, so the inverter turned out to be the number one problem. that they want to test and cool first, what is the right way to do business and then when you take the inverter and I'm not going to do this completely, but if you take the inverter and put it in place, then what happens?

These different outputs will connect together and, um, that causes them to combine all of their different cooldown attributes, um cooldown, so it's kind of like the overall strategy. Let me get this out of the way so I can get into a little bit more of the detail so let's look, let's look at what we have when we start we start to see the inside here, so if we look inside again, we're looking at the rtv that I showed you a second ago, We are seeing how they are. I have sealed this, but I think circulation is much more important than everything else, so the coolant comes in through this port, comes out through this slot, and then goes to the low pressure die cast, which is also The stator housing and what we really liked is that as the coolant flows, it goes through this passageway that connects to this one, it goes into that one, it spins to cool the entire exterior, basically with a track type performance of racing or streamer and finally what happens.

The hot coolant now comes out here and comes back, so again, the brilliant part about this is that they eliminated an oil pump, an oil filter, a heat exchanger and that's something that Tesla has on board that these guys don't have . I don't have to do it because if we look here you can see that this is the oil filter, this is the pump and this is the heat exchanger that that tesla is using and that the vw doesn't have, so it's a good idea because you're eliminating , you're removing a system, so in this particular case, Volkswagen basically got ahead of Tesla by getting rid of these three components, so their goal when they were creating this engine and gearbox assembly was to try and figure out how to make a simplified version of the product and keep that cost down.

They also thought it would be cool if we could figure out how to make the inverter first because it's really all about electronics. The engine doesn't really care how hot or cold it's going to be, it's all about this thing that's here now. The only thing we saw that totally blew us away were these tiny little squirt holes, so let me move on to this side. If we look here, this tiny little hole is, I think, the bleed, so the coolant comes in through this port, here it runs all the way through the housing hole and then this is the outlet port that's going to go to the return line to the heating system to the cooling system, so that little bulge right there, that little hole, I think it's a bleed just to make sure there's no air inside the system, okay, so let's move on and I want to talk a little about the rotor and the stator the stator is this part here and the first thing you'll notice is that this doesn't look like this okay this is from a tesla and it's using a wire wrap okay this is a design of yoke and Frankly, I like the yoke design better because essentially I can get 60 versus 46 percent fill here with the typical windings that you would see in an electric motor, that kind of thing tells me something. otherwise it basically means that I'm probably going to use a different type of magnet and that magnet will probably have less of something called disposito to make it work and the disposito and neodytium are the two most expensive parts. of any magnet, so if we take a look at that, let's now look at the way the motor is assembled and essentially what they're using is four big long bolts, this is the bolt that's here and essentially it you push through and then you put a nut through it, so our guys like this because it allows you to compress the laminates, we'll talk more about laminates in a minute, but it allows you to compress the laminates and the magnets and and it allows you to do that at the end and then keep them tight because the laminates, the magnets and the spinning cause a force that basically wants to blow the electric motor into pieces doing something like this with this long motor or sorry, so long. bolt, you're holding it together and you're doing it in a profitable way.

The problem is that I don't like bolts. I'll talk more about that in a bit. One of our things is that I talk to our customers all the time about getting rid of threaded fasteners, they are the most problematic and the most troublesome of all the different components that can be put into any product, so a second ago we were talking and the guys, the electricians, they were like, well, you liked it and I already told you all the reasons why you liked it and I said, okay, I don't like the threaded fastener, so how can I fix this problem?

The way to do this is by using something that would look like this. You push that rod in and when it comes out the other end, you clamp the whole thing in a fitting and then you do something called radial riveting. Radial riveting works faster than a threaded fastener and will never, ever, always be there. whereas threaded fasteners, if you looked at some of the other ones I've talked about, as soon as they're loaded sideways, they start to come apart and the reason I know that is because when I was at Ford, I was in charge of roofing lab and fasteners we had an engine division and found that any side loading on a threaded fastener, especially with a nut, is a real problem, so I like the idea of ​​keeping it together without any adhesive.

I don't really like the idea of ​​using a threaded fastener and there is a way around it, so it's a free consultation for VW, so let's talk about another little aspect that we thought was interesting: the shaft, the rotor shaft, It is not heat treated. Now, this was, this was a conscientious decision on VW's part because they said that if they put threads here they would be easier to deform and they didn't like the idea so instead of having a bearing lock nut which is like what they put on all the etc.on the four bolts and that saved them from getting heat treated on the axle and I think that could work, which is a lot of experimentation to make something like that happen, so these are these bolts here, um, when they're used up, They're We're going to go through the same process that I talked about before you torque them down and then you're going to tighten it a little bit more, which is going to put a load on this shaft that's going to give themit will allow it to go into a plastic state and that will hold it together even better so kudos for how you did it I would just do it differently do something here let's just remove the cover plate and talk a little bit about the magnets right here I have the magnetic one. matrix for the nissan leaf here i have the tesla model 3 and the model y and here we have the delta layout that

volkswagen

has decided to go with so you can see this looks a little bit like that but it's not the same and frankly , the other thing I thought was interesting was let's take a look at the green fabric here and this will tell us what the magnetic array looks like on this vehicle now. take a look at this, see that pattern over there, okay, that pattern is done like this to eliminate noise.

Okay, noise reduction is a big thing with electric motors. If we look at the Nissan product, you can take a look here and you can. Look, there is only one displacement. If we look at the Tesla, you can see that they have a small one at the beginning and at the end and a long one in the center. These two will be the same as the one in the center and that one again is made for noise and performance. I've never seen this before, but you know what I like because it's a gradual scrolling. Anyone who has been on a train track in the United States knows that when you hit that train track, it moves or when you hear the train pass where two train rails meet, you will hear the thud, the thud, if you go to any of the high-speed trains such as those in China, Japan or Europe, they do not make any noise and the reason is. because that's because they are cut on the bias, so in the United States we cut them this way so that they join together, but in Europe, Japan and China they cut them on the bias and that bias allows the wheel to pass more smoothly and that is Pretty much the same thing that's happening here with the green fabric which tells us that this will probably give you a little bit more performance, but on top of that it will also help you with noise and noise is a problem with electric motors. so let's look down here at the laminates.

I already talked about these. Before we take out a couple of LAN laminates, we take out a couple of these things and you can see here that this is where a magnet goes. That's where a magnet goes and this is where the magnet goes, so what are all those other things? Well this is called skeletonizing and all they are trying to do is get rid of as much weight as they can. It's a very good idea, there is no reason in the world. why do we need that extra weight for the laminates to work and do their job, so getting rid of it, we've seen this on almost every engine, but this is one that's done in a very good job skeletonizing it, so what?

How do we keep this whole system together? Here we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine threaded fasteners that basically go through this hole, through the stator housing and towards the front end of the gearbox okay, so now we're going to wrap this up by talking about the investor, but before we do that, there's one thing i want, i want the audience to talk about the monroe associates that we've worked on on everything from barbie to space station which When it comes to designing new products, one of the things that we found that changed the minds of the people that we work with is what we call the good design principles card, is this thing here on it, uh, on one side, we We have some good design principles, on the other hand we have some rules and regulations, but essentially what we're looking at is that we want to design the product so that Bob can put it together and Bob is the blindfolded, one-armed builder.

Now why would I want to do that right? Because a robot is basically a blind, one-armed idiot. It's okay, it only does one thing. Pick up something and leave something. Remember that ad where the big yes is like this. An armed builder, if he can put it together, a robot can put it together, and if the robot can put it together, then a man can usually do it faster, cheaper and better, except for something called 3ds, dirty, dangerous and monotonous, so that's the one one aspect and the second. Is this right here? The challenge of the value of the piece.

There are basically only two rules. Does the piece have to move? I don't care if it does now, but in a new design, could you get rid of that movement? Does a piece have to move? Does the piece have to be fundamentally made of a different material? Well, when you ask those two questions, you end up with penalty points if you can't say yes, and essentially for us, the piece value challenge is telling us that piece should be removed. or combined with other parts, another way we have to make things happen in a new way is here, these are the poor quality drivers.

If you look at almost anything that is modern, you will see that it probably fits in with the old days. They use screws and why did we go to snaps because they are better? People say, "Oh no, the snap-fit ​​isn't that good, that's wrong." I can make anything fit together, including pieces of wood, so we can design now what we never could design in the past. We can figure out how to get rid of fasteners and threaded fasteners is what everyone usually says, but actually it could be threaded fasteners, it could be rivets, anything that is a slave fastener is a problem, so these are things that normally we would do.

Now I have said that I don't like some of the threaded fasteners I see on this product. I think there are too many, but let's look at everything you've seen so far. This product has simple vertical or straight. down or top down assembly strategy this is great for Bob, Bob's philosophy of being able to put it together with one hand behind your back and your eyes closed, that's a great idea, that's the kind of idea we really want have so I want to I want to see a product with that philosophy and when I look at this, there's a lot of good things here so we're going to talk about the inverter so let me show you the one thing that I like.

Like it's really hard to show exactly what's going on, so I removed the casing on this side so you can see and so I can expose the wires here to the electric motor and if we look at the way the inverter goes, I showed it. You already did it once, but essentially, this is going to go right above these two components down here, so you'll be able to drop the inverter on top of it, it goes through the case and then I can clip it on. those screws, so it's a nice top-to-bottom assembly, but there's more, so we look inside here and we might as well start from the top.

You will notice that there are many threaded fasteners for this, as I said in Germany, they should be able to do it. get threaded fasteners 10 for a penny so let's take the lid off and when we turn it over you can see there's something here, this black thing, it's an EMI seal that basically keeps any type of electronic discharge in or out of this box. You don't want to have that kind of thing, so we move it there now. I like the idea of ​​this all being vertically down. I really like what I see. I mean, everything here is vertical.

I like it. That's good. The problem. Look at all the screws holding it in place. I don't understand. He has more threaded fasteners than anyone else. No one has as many threaded fasteners as we have here so the next thing that comes off is the top cooling plate and this is basically a heat sink that removes heat from all the components down here now we have the um now we have the next layer of the next layer of components and here below you have the cooling tray, these are the pins, so the coolant that we talked about goes through the uh, the electric motor comes in here, it flows through here and it goes around these pins, these pins then remove the heat and that means that these igbts here are not going to be very hot so we turn this down now one of the things that we really liked is this ornament here let me leave this this is called the bleed resistor and the bleed resistor bleed fits right here and it's glued, so when What I take when I take this plate and I put it over the top of the bleed resistor, I just have to make these two connections below, that's what we have here on the VW, This is what we have, this is what we have.

I've outgrown the uh on the uh nissan leaf this is a monstrous size and the leaf is a much smaller capacity electric motor now this is something interesting this is not my this is my least favorite this thanks this probably comes in second. Sorry, this is the tesla, this one probably comes in second for me, this bleed resistor right here, which is screwed on, this could easily be a press fit. I can make snaps in the plastic or aluminum and snap it into place. with the glue it will never ever come off and by the way no one is going to repair these things but my favorites are still the bleed resistors that you find in a tesla and then they have their own little thermal pad that goes on top of them, i I like the idea of ​​putting these kinds of things on the boards because I know everything will be fine all the time, this requires manual assembly or robotic assembly, depending on how fast you are doing things, let's take out the cooling tray. again I like this uh I like this pro this uh this design because it's vertical down but it's also done cleverly so let's take out the capacitor um sometimes I can get this sometimes I can't here let me do it this way so this It's your capacitor and that's basically what makes the electric motor run, then you have a secondary capacitor that comes out and then you have your bus bar that comes out.

Now take a look and then here we have a we have the The connection that we need to get to the electric motor here is the connector that it goes through and then it's basically screwed into place from the back. When I first saw this, I said how come there is no seal? but the seal is on the male connector, the female is basically sealed around this outer edge and around the inner edge, so that's a good idea. There are a lot of good ideas here that make me think that VW did it. great job my only complaint is holy mackerel i can't believe how many threaded fasteners i have never seen so many threaded fasteners on a product of this size or this type i think one thing we need to keep in mind is that dr.

I used to say that with threaded fasteners, if you put more of them, your quality is going to decrease and the reason for this is that threaded fasteners are, that's the wrong name, these are called threaded fasteners, they are threaded into fasteners because in the end During World War II, everyone complained about components found in different products from different parts of the world, especially in Britain, Canada and Australia where they used things like Acme and Whitworth. They had a hard time removing the bolts. They were too tight. It's not like the products broke and they had a hard time removing the bolts well with a 60 degree inclined angle, the thread angle is 60 degrees and the highlight is 15 which is a locking angle and so True, eight is just as bad.

I think eight degrees or whatever and square threads, these things are made to stay together forever, we don't use them, we use a 60 degree threaded fastener and that's what it does if it vibrates, if it thermal cycles, if it gets any lateral load. It's falling apart now, how do I know that? Because I used to be the Co-Captain of Roofing and Fastening at the Ford Engine Division and I can tell you with certainty that we ran millions of experiments and threaded fasteners are not his friend, get rid of them. I highly recommend that if you're going to do something like this, there's only one way to fasten these things because these screws are too small to do the job, so I highly recommend that you glue them, uh, loctite, something like that. but if it were up to me, I would figure out how to intersperse these things, put them in place and that's it, that's it, you're not going to wreck your car to change or fix an inverter, I just don't think that's going to be the case.

This happens, I think this is like your ignition module, no one fixes them either, so with all this, what do we find? Well, there's a lot of good stuff here, a lot of interesting products, um, they've done a great job. work to remove an oil filter, pump and cooler. I like the fact that they had to use coolant instead of oil. I kept saying that "oil", there will probably be a lot of deletions that you'll wonder what's going on, but that's one of the things that's happening on the negative side. I really wish she had seen less less less bras.

I think, frankly, Volkswagen did a pretty good job, so, and just for those people who want to know, we've already proven that this is a low pressure die cast and it uses the same material as the casing, so at the same time End of the day is a very good example of how a product should be designed, I think there are a couple of exceptions, but for the most part I like what I see. Thanks again Volkswagen for allowing us to film your powertrain and I'm not sure if I want this back but you can have it back but I don't think it's going to work anymore so anyway until next time thanks again for watching Monroe on alive and keep tipping those cashiers.

Thank you and have a good night.