We're here at Pikes Peak
International Hill Climb
with Nick from Faraday Future.
Now one of the emerging technologies
that we are very aware of these days is
the progress with electric vehicles
and Faraday Future have got
one of their beta vehicles here
for testing at Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
And we just wanted to take some time to
get some of the details
about this vehicle from Nick.
So first of all Nick electric
vehicles, we are seeing
more and more prominence
of electric vehicles.
Fair to say that it is
the future do you think
that internal combustion
engines days are numbered?
They're numbered, there
may be some versions
of internal combustion engines
that will see a future,
there are sustainable
fuels, there are biofuels
that could all still be used
I'm sure into the future,
but electric vehicles will
take a much bigger part
of mobility as we move forward in time.
Now before we get into the actual car,
where we are seeing
electric vehicles become
more prominent, as I've
mentioned, there is a little bit
of controversy in the industry in general
about exactly how clean
electric vehicles are.
Obviously they're not burning fossil fuel,
so that's an advantage, but
of course the electricity
powering them has to come from somewhere.
A lot of the power generation
in places around the world
is still coming from dirty sources,
such as coal burning power
plants and then there is
also those commenting about the mining
for the materials that
go into the batteries.
I'd love to hear your take on that.
Whilst that's partially
true, yes there are countries
there are places where the
electricity produced that goes
into the cars is, for want
of better term, is dirty.
We've gotta look longer
term at the long term future
and be saying, if we look
at the universe as a whole,
what are the most sustainable,
long-term sources of energy?
It is light, sunlight, and it is gravity
and those two forms of sources
of energy actually produce
or are able to produce all
sorts of energy here on earth.
We've got tidal energy,
which is from gravity,
we've got wind power which is from,
ultimately it's from sunlight,
it's different temperatures
in different areas create
wind, so that's sustainable.
We've got direct solar
energy, we've got many forms
of producing energy in a sustainable way,
moving forward into the
future and so electricity
is the viable source
of power for the future
and therefore as we're developing
the vehicles, ready for that time.
Essentially what I'm taking from this,
this has been my thoughts
on the whole matter
is that right now, yes there
are potentially some places
where electric vehicles
may not be 100% clean,
but we're looking more
long term and as countries
embrace cleaner energy
sources, the electric vehicle
is obviously going to be the way forward
with low emissions, low carbon footprint.
Absolutely, that's the way we see it
and that's why although
we're solving the problems
of the electric vehicles,
we also encourage
and are supporting people
that are looking at things
like solar energy production,
tidal energy, wind power.
There's all sorts of ways
of getting that power
and we support those
people and want to embrace
those technologies to make eventually
a much cleaner, more sustainable future.
Now let's get onto the
vehicle now that we've got
that out of the way and I'm
gonna be completely honest here,
while I know IC engines inside and out,
that's been my sole occupation
for the last 15 years,
electric vehicles are a little bit unique,
so I'm definitely not
professing to be an expert.
I do however recall a little bit
from my youth when I was playing around
with radio controlled
cars, as many people would.
Is the technology still
similar to what we saw
with radio controlled
cars with electric motors?
Yeah, in some ways it's exactly the same.
What you had in your RC
car when you were younger
is what we've got in our car
but in a much bigger form.
But I bet you only had
one motor in your RC car,
in our car we have currently three motors,
but we could have two motors
or just a single motor.
It's the adaptability
that we built into the car
to have different levels
of power by designing
one really clean, really
efficient electric motor,
we can have different power levels
by putting different numbers
of those into the vehicle.
We look at an IC
situation, where we have to
maybe start off with a two
liter turbo charged engine
producing 200-ish horsepower, if we want
to cut 400, we have to throw
all that technology away,
all that learning away,
we have to start again,
we have to develop a V6 engine
and maybe supercharge it,
maybe we want even more
power because we want
to get up Pikes Peak really quickly,
then we go and have to throw
all that technology away
and do up a V8
engine, and might we even
turbo charge or supercharge that.
It's so much development, so much cost,
so much wasted effort in doing
these jobs multiple times,
we've designed one really
dynamic, really efficient motor
that we can just put
once, twice, three times,
or should we be crazy at
some point in the future,
we could even put four of them in the car
and each of our motors
produces around 350 horsepower.
The car we have here today
is over 1000 horsepower.
I'm just interested to delve into it
because the concept of multiple engines
from an IC background
is obviously not usual.
How are those three engines
incorporated in your beta Faraday car?
We have two motors in the
back and one in the front
and why conventionally if
you looked at an IC car,
there have been people
that have tried putting
dual motor cars, a motor
in the front and a motor
in the rear, but the
controlling of two IC engines
to perfectly harmonize
together, to deliver power
at the right moment, at
the right time together,
even with modern fuel
injection, it's still difficult,
whereas with an electric
motor, that control is so easy,
so precise and the reason
we've got two at the back
is they're completely independent.
We don't need a differential.
The differential on the back
of our car is purely electronic
it's purely software, so
deciding how much power,
what speed to run each
motor at, it's electronic,
it's software and it can be
controlled in microseconds,
not in rather clunky,
quirky mechanical ways
that don't give that
fine level of control.
Just to break that down, I'm assuming
from that you've got simply
one motor powering one rear
wheel and another motor
powering the other rear wheel?
That's absolutely right, yes.
No need for a limited slip differential,
that brings me onto another
concept there is obviously
traction control when you're trying to put
over 1000 horsepower to the ground,
traction is obviously going
to be some kind of an issue.
I was to understand your car
runs zero to 60 mile an hour
in a pretty impressive
time, what's it doing?
Yes, we've got times of
2.39, so under 2.5 seconds
for any car is tremendous
and we're reasonably well
under that and there's more
to come, we've got even more
developments going on that are
bringing those times down even more.
While the car isn't currently
in production for any car
that is a very impressive number.
Let's just touch on that traction control.
Obviously traction control
in an IC application is
nothing new, but there
are some challenges with
reducing the engine torque quickly
and getting really good control
over that engine torque.
How does that compare
with electric vehicles?
It's very different
because in an IC engine,
you're controlling engine
ECUs to try and cut power
or you're using brakes to
try and limit the amount
of power on a particular
corner, either traction
or stability control,
with the electric motor,
you're able to precisely
demand exact amount of torques
and do that many times a second,
we're talking a microsecond
analysis going on and
slip control being down
to that level of control
and torque to fractions
of Newton meters of torque being able
to be exactly demanded,
so the system can measure
what the conditions are and very quickly
with feedback control,
get really accurate,
really precise control
and if you see our car
do a launch and see it take off,
many people are astounded at
the speed that it takes off.
With no gearing, with just a single speed,
we don't have to then also
change gear multiple times,
so it's naught to sixty
most cars do in one gear,
but then beyond that, they're
having to change gear.
When we push on and do
things like quarter mile,
we do the whole quarter of a
mile without ever changing gear
in fact we can go up to top
speed with never changing gear.
There's something interesting
I just want to delve into
because again, for those
from an IC background,
obviously the gear box is
inground into our expectations.
The torque and power delivery
from an electric motor
is quite unique in that
the maximum torque occurs
basically at stall or stationary,
and then the torque drops off
so can you just tell us
how that power band works in terms
of the torque and the power?
Well the torque doesn't
drop off for some time.
We have quite away up
our speed and rev range
before the torque even starts to drop off,
but the power virtually
doesn't drop off at all
within any of the speed
range that we operate within.
It's phenomenal and that's
one of the great feelings
of driving an electric car,
if you're driving an IC car
perhaps in traffic and
we see an opportunity,
an overtaking opportunity,
we have to either manually
or automatically downshift,
that takes some time
and effort to do it before
we get that shift down,
the torque available and
accelerate into the gap.
With an electric car,
you're able to take those
opportunities far more
quickly and that's one
of the things when you
drive an electric car
which is so noticeable,
that instantaneous torque
that's available throughout
the entire speed and rev range.
With just one gear
essentially, I'm assuming
that you're going to have to
make some kind of compromise
on the gearing for the
vehicle to I guess balance
the low RPM torque or low speed torque
and your maximum desirable road speed?
It's more of a balance between
the speed and acceleration
and the range of the car,
because we obviously want
to have a speed where the
motor is operating in a really
efficient mode when it's going
at a normal driving speed
so that you get the motor running
at its most efficient mode
at say 50 or 60 miles an
hour, which we can say
would be a typical driving
speed, so you really want
to optimize that range against
the performance requirements.
That just takes a little bit
of work and some calculations
and some experimentation within the team
and we think we got that
down to a good margin
because we've got astonishing
acceleration figures
that you've already talked
about and we've got a range
of well over 300 miles, approaching
around 370 miles at the moment.
That definitely is impressive
mileage, because that is
another area where there's
been a lot of negative talk
about the usefulness of electric
vehicles with their range.
Now there's one more aspect,
while we've been talking
about the power is one of
the things we've been talking
about here a lot at Pikes
Peak International Hill Climb
is the high altitude, we've got
load barometric air pressure
we get into over 14,000
feet by the summit,
so for a conventional IC
engine, it's really really hard,
there's not a lot of oxygen in the air,
so they're struggling to
make the sort of power
they make at sea level
and really, that's an area
the electric vehicle doesn't suffer there.
Doesn't suffer at all there.
Electrons flow just as
quickly down the wires up
at 14,000 feet as they do
down here at 9,000 feet,
the same as they would at
sea level, it doesn't make
any difference, so we get all
our 1000 plus horsepower wherever we are.
It can deliver that all the time.
Another area that we've
seen some big developments
in with electric vehicles and
I guess this may have been
one of the limitations
back in the earlier days,
certainly still may be
to a degree a limitation,
is the battery technology.
Generally they haven't had
good mileage as we've discussed
so how would you put the
level of technology we've got
in batteries right now, is that still
something that's holding EV back?
Are you looking forward to some
improvements in that technology?
And when can we see that in the future?
Batteries have improved
enormously in the last five,
eight years there, the
technology has improved,
the amount of energy we can
cram into the same amount
of space has improved dramatically
and the prices have
plummeted and that's gonna be
the bigger enabler for EV
technology to expand more
in the sort of every day market,
is when that battery price
comes down and we're able to deliver cars
at the price range that the
average person can expect.
The price is one thing
and the energy density,
amount of energy we can
get into a battery cell
is getting better all the time.
We're expecting over the next few years,
there'll be some further gains in that,
maybe another 20% yet and
there's more chemistries
and more technologies being yet developed,
so there’ll be further stages
from where we are today.
Even with what we've got
today, as the price comes down,
the technology slightly
improves, and already having got
300, nearly 400 miles of
range, we're at a point where
we're virtually matching
gasoline car range,
you have to refuel one of
those, the speed of recharging
is getting faster and
faster and so we will soon
be at a point where they're very similar.
Probably ultimately there will
still be a small difference
but after driving 300 miles,
most of us want a little bit
of a rest break, so what's
15 minutes, 20 minutes.
That's the charge time at
the moment, 15 to 20 minutes?
That's the charge time we're
looking at people expecting
and often charge time is
talked about in miles per hour,
which may initially sound
strange, but when you think
about it, it's how many miles
you can get in a certain
amount of time and people
like ourselves and Tesla,
we're looking at speeds of three,
four, five, 600 miles an hour.
If you want to try and get
another 300 miles range in,
you're talking half an hour maybe,
and if you don't need quite
that much then quicker times,
and those speeds are
getting better all the time
with improvements in charging technology.
Another technology that
electric vehicles have
that internal combustion
engines miss out on
is regenerative braking,
so can you just talk
us through briefly how that works?
The advantage with the
electric motor is basically
the same as a generator, so
when you run it the opposite way
when you put energy back into
it, it generates electricity.
What we're able to do
with an EV is when we,
instead of having to use
the mechanical brakes,
in many circumstances
we can use the motors
to slow the vehicle down
and put that energy back
into the battery pack and
that's why for instance
on our car we have four
wheel drive, we have
all motors connected, all
wheels connected to the motors,
so that we can recover energy
from every wheel so we put
as much energy back into the battery pack
at every opportunity that we can.
This would be an advantage
particularly around town
where you're doing a lot of start, stop
and there's a lot of braking?
Yes, absolutely.
That's the point, anything we
can do to extend that range,
any energy we can recover,
it's quite noticeable on cars
like a Tesla, the brakes
just don't wear out
anywhere near so fast,
they don't even have to go
in for service so much
because the brakes last
so much longer because you're
using that regenerative energy
so much of the time that you
often don't use the brakes at all.
Look, Nick it's been really interesting
getting some insight
into the EV technology.
As I said at the start,
it's not something I know
a huge amount about, but
we know it is going to be
a big part of our future,
maybe we're still gonna have
a few IC cars running around,
but you'll definitely see
more and more EV vehicles in our future.
We look forward to
following the development
of the Faraday in beta at the moment,
and seeing it make its
way into production.
Thanks for the chat.
Okay, thank you, good talking to you.
