Teardown video shows a broken Volkswagen ID.4 front drive unit. A simple sealing ring seems to be the cause of the failure. Compared to combustion engines, electric drive motors are shockingly simple. Case in point: the front drive unit of the Volkswagen ID.4 and Audi Q4 E-Tron you see in the video embedded below. It’s a very compact unit that integrates the motor, transmission and inverter. However, there is a problem with this particular one: it’s dead. By the looks of it, a bad sealing ring allowed coolant to go where it wasn’t supposed to go, killing the entire unit. In the video, YouTuber I Do Cars , who is well-known for taking apart combustion engines, tries his best to take the front drive unit apart to see what went
Tag Archives: EVMaintenance
07
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Many of you are worried about the long-term reliability of electric vehicle batteries. I know because you ask me all of the time. Among skeptics and prospective buyers alike, it’s one of the first things to come up: Will the battery last? Yet more and more data is showing that modern EV traction batteries just don’t fail in significant numbers. You don’t have to worry about them. It’s the damn 12-volts that’ll leave you stranded in the office parking lot. Internal combustion drivers know that risk. Traditional cars use a 12-volt battery—usually a chunky lead-acid unit—to start the vehicle and power the electronics. You may expect that EVs, with their massive drive batteries, don’t need these ancient bricks. Yet they rely on them for the exact same reasons. EV 12-volt