I think this is a great bunch of photos, and I even enjoyed the engineer's comments. I can't remember which one said "as an engineer, that set up is going to cause trouble" (I'm actually paraphrasing the person)...which gave me a chuckle. My father was engineer, and the first thing I learned about engineering is that I didn't want to be an engineer... So as a business person, I'd respond to the "trouble with this setup" comment by saying that they don't build billion dollar auto plants if the axle is going to cause a ride so bad that it's intolerable or dangerous (unless you're Chrysler). I'm confident Scout is going to make this work. I just need the ride to approximate my Tacoma on the road...because off the road everyone has a bumpy ride.
I Crawled Underneath The New Scout To Look At The Engineering. Here's What I Found - The Autopian
As beautiful as the new Scout Traveler and Terra are, one thing that we haven’t seen nearly enough of is hardware. We’ve seen the sheetmetal and the fancy interior, we’ve heard all the specs, we’ve listened to all the heritage mumbo-jumbo marketing, but let’s all be honest: We want to see...www.theautopian.com
Includes thoughts from Kevin Harty at Munro and Associates.
The most interesting part is the information about the EBeam rear axle. It's not just a solid rear axle, but the motor is actually mounted to the axle itself.
Interesting article about the engineering underneath the new Scouts
- Thread starter Albal
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Hello everyone, I am new to the group, but not new to off-roading and overlanding. We currently own a well equipped Landcruiser 100 and I am building up an 2002 F250 7.3L Powerstroke, and I always had a sweet spot for Scouts but never owned one (yet)!
Regarding the combination of IFS with a the solid rear axle in the new Scout:
This is definitely a very common setup in trucks these days, and GM even uses in their HD pickups while Ford and Ram still have solid front axles. However, the heavy e-motor on the rear axle as shown worries me because of the high un-sprung weight as several members pointed out in this thread. I see two alternatives that would keep the solid rear axle but reduce the un-sprung weight - curious what people think:
1. Mount the rear motor on the frame (about where the center differential sits in a ICE truck) and run a conventional driveshaft to a conventional rear axle and use standard parts like Dana.
Pro: simple setup leveraging tried and trusted components.
Con: additional weight, space and probably some play which negates the "instant torque feeling" of e-motors
2. De-Dion setup with the e-motor on the frame and a separate "empty" axle tying both wheels together. Combine it with a Watts link instead of a Panhard rod to keep the axle nice and centered. For those who know what the Swiss designed Mowag Duro military truck is, that's what they have used since the original design from the 90's. Now the company is part of General Dynamics.
Pro: Best of both worlds: low un-sprung weight yet solid axle for flex
Con: Complex design which needs to be well executed and is expensive
Thoughts?
Regarding the combination of IFS with a the solid rear axle in the new Scout:
This is definitely a very common setup in trucks these days, and GM even uses in their HD pickups while Ford and Ram still have solid front axles. However, the heavy e-motor on the rear axle as shown worries me because of the high un-sprung weight as several members pointed out in this thread. I see two alternatives that would keep the solid rear axle but reduce the un-sprung weight - curious what people think:
1. Mount the rear motor on the frame (about where the center differential sits in a ICE truck) and run a conventional driveshaft to a conventional rear axle and use standard parts like Dana.
Pro: simple setup leveraging tried and trusted components.
Con: additional weight, space and probably some play which negates the "instant torque feeling" of e-motors
2. De-Dion setup with the e-motor on the frame and a separate "empty" axle tying both wheels together. Combine it with a Watts link instead of a Panhard rod to keep the axle nice and centered. For those who know what the Swiss designed Mowag Duro military truck is, that's what they have used since the original design from the 90's. Now the company is part of General Dynamics.
Pro: Best of both worlds: low un-sprung weight yet solid axle for flex
Con: Complex design which needs to be well executed and is expensive
Thoughts?
Welcome to the forum!
My guess is that Scout looked at all the options. I'm going to reserve judgement until the final design is announced.
Same - honestly I'm drawn to the modern-retro design + physical switchgear. Perhaps a configuration with on-road/soft-road bias might be offered?
My use case is probably more Rivian and the exterior design is fine for what it is. But not doing that interior.
To me, this quote is the most important part of the article (based on the worst parts of driving pick-up trucks in the shoulder seasons, or in winter on frozen backroads, washboard roads, freeze/thaw dirt roads, mudded out class IV roads etc)... Only one edit, b/c I'm fairly sure the author meant to write "TRUCKS" instead of "CARS" in the quote below:
"If you’ve ever driven an old solid axle car around a bumpy turn, you will probably have experienced the sideways dance these cars would do as the tires lose contact with the ground and lose grip. Not very pleasant. Of course, we could use really stiff springs and dampers to help control the axle motion but that would hurt ride, and we don’t want that."
Coming from a Silverado 2500HD into a R1T with 4 independent motors and independent air suspension may have made me weak... The ride quality is night and day compared to the ride from an HD truck with a solid rear axle, BUT we need to also keep in mind that the Scout Terra is completely dissimilar from a 2500HD set up. I think what the author may have missed (at least as it relates to the axle) is that the battery may off-set some of this "bounciness" in production with proper damping. He noted that the battery would be situated slightly more to the rear of the truck. The only real reason why I'm associating more battery weight over the rear axle with a potentially better ride, is that the Terra would otherwise be very light over the rear axle... My 2500HD rode so much better with a full load of mulch, or some payload in the bed over bumps and bad roads. Balancing out the Terra's light rear with battery weight and a solid axle will provide different ride characteristics compared to an ICE P/U truck,
"If you’ve ever driven an old solid axle car around a bumpy turn, you will probably have experienced the sideways dance these cars would do as the tires lose contact with the ground and lose grip. Not very pleasant. Of course, we could use really stiff springs and dampers to help control the axle motion but that would hurt ride, and we don’t want that."
Coming from a Silverado 2500HD into a R1T with 4 independent motors and independent air suspension may have made me weak... The ride quality is night and day compared to the ride from an HD truck with a solid rear axle, BUT we need to also keep in mind that the Scout Terra is completely dissimilar from a 2500HD set up. I think what the author may have missed (at least as it relates to the axle) is that the battery may off-set some of this "bounciness" in production with proper damping. He noted that the battery would be situated slightly more to the rear of the truck. The only real reason why I'm associating more battery weight over the rear axle with a potentially better ride, is that the Terra would otherwise be very light over the rear axle... My 2500HD rode so much better with a full load of mulch, or some payload in the bed over bumps and bad roads. Balancing out the Terra's light rear with battery weight and a solid axle will provide different ride characteristics compared to an ICE P/U truck,
Scout. “People. Connections. Community. Authenticity." Welcome to the Scout community. Enjoy the ride.
I agree. They have said from day one their team is VERY familiar with off roading and they understand the needs but also have to balance for ride quality as they realize the vast majority of sales will be on roaders. While not EV, Bronco did a very good job of meeting in the middle and I’m sure that is SM goal as well
The problem with this is the battery pack takes up the entire belly between the wheels so that spot where a center diff would go is full of batteries. You could potentially split the pack but that complicates wiring and serviceability. This is likely why everyone so far has gone with independent suspension.
I wonder if you could mount the motor on the frame, directly above the axle, and have it connect to a standard diff, rotated 90 degrees up. You'd need some kind of sliding shaft as the suspension moved, something like a PTO shaft on a tractor implement?
Cool idea but yeah, complex and expensive. I agree with the others that Scout must have thought this through already.
Note also that ZF (OEM transmission manufacturer) sells a solid rear axle with integrated motor: https://www.zf.com/products/en/cars/products_63695.html Lists 241hp base and 469hp peak.
Fun fact: I just discovered that the new low cost EV mini truck called "Slate" uses a De Dion rear axle. Somehow they must have concluded that this is a cost effective solution even for a very basic vehicle. I agree with what was stated several times on this forum: Let's wait and see what Scout will actually choose for production.
I think I need to reply to my own post based upon the image below. I know this is an early image, but based upon the solid rear axle, it doesn't look like any part of the battery pack will actually sit "over" the top of the axle. It does appear that the pack extends as far as possible rearward toward the axle (which is what the author noted), which is good is good:
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