EVS ARE HERE TO STAY.IT'S TIME WE ALL LEARN HOW THEY WORK.

When was the last time you stopped to think about how electric cars actually work?

- FRANK MARKUS

We superfans of the car biz have mostly developed a reasonable understanding of how combustion powertrains work. Most of us can visualize fuel and air entering a combustion chamber, exploding, pushing a piston down, and rotating a crankshaft that ultimately turns the wheels. We generally understand the differences between inline, flat, V-shaped, and maybe even Wankel rotary combustion engines.

Mechanical engineering concepts like these are comparatively easy to comprehend. But it’s probably a fair bet to wager that only a minority of folks reading this can explain on a bar napkin exactly how invisible electrons turn a car’s wheels or how a permanent-magnet motor differs from an AC induction one. Electrical engineering can seem like black magic and witchcraft to car nuts, so it’s time to demystify this bold new world of electromobility.

Copper windings form an electromagnetic rotor; direct current is applied via brushes that contact the commutator (black), which switches the electromagnet’s polarity every revolution to keep the motor spinning.

How Does an Electric Motor Work?

It has to do with magnetism and the natural interplay between electric fields and magnetic fields. When an electrical circuit closes, allowing electrons to move along a wire, those moving electrons generate an electromagnetic field complete with a north and a south pole. When this happens in the presence of another magnetic field—either from a different batch of speeding electrons or from Wile E. Coyote’s giant ACME horseshoe magnet, those opposite poles attract, and like poles repel each other.