Volvo ReCharge Will Base Research Plug-In Hybrids

Yeah what kengoh said, since these motors are right at the wheels there is no transmission to multiply the torque. You must be thinking ok but what about when they dyno a car that's going through the tranny so it should give you an already multiplied figure. Well the thing is when they dyno a car they do it in the neutral gear, usually 3rd for 5spd and 4th for 6spd trannys. This being run by electrical motors without a tranny and the way an electric motor acts with torque being inversely proportional to RPM by the time this gets to 3rd gear speed like 60-90km/h it will probably have like 300nm combined instead of 3,996 and at 160km/h it would be a really low figure.

if the wheel goes from edge of the tire to edge of the tire at 20", then at a speed of 160kph you get about 840 rpm for the electric motors. Electric motors can spin way faster then this, the 160kph is not limited by the electric motors, its limited by how fast the gas engine can generate electricity. that being said the torque of electric motors don't exponentially decrease with rpms have a look at the tesla's torque curve http://www.teslamotors.com/images/content/motor_torque_curve.gif it maintains most of its torque till just after 8000rpm. However, I think these motors can sustain 999Nm each, but I doubt the battery system could pump out that much power, to the wheels, if you put in some capacitors this car could be a beast. And as to kengoh, yes normal cars need to due that, but normal cars don't have 10x gear ratio's in their transmissions.

The Tesla has a 3spd transmission, and there is more than 10x multiplication in transmissions as not only the gear ratios count, there are various changes in diameters along the driver train that affect it too along with the differential. This is from the tesla. 1st 4.20:1 with an overall of 14.3:1, second 2.17:1 with an overall of 7.4:1 as you can see it has another factor of 3.40:1 that is added along the drive train be it at the dif. or just changes between input and output shafts. That aside check out this link for more torque curves http://www.reliance.com/mtr/mtrthrmn.htm it shows the torque curves for the different types of DC motors. You can see that the Tesla has a compound wound motor who knows what this will have as it is a completely different set up.

Yeah 840rpm on a 20" input shaft i doubt the motor will have a 20" rotor. Also i think you made a mathematical error because i got 1671rpm, so depending on the size of the motors diameter wise they could be spinning pretty darn fast.

alright, I will bite, I really don't want to have to caluclate that again, if it was 1671 rpm, that still doesn't change the fact that electric motors can rev many times higher then that. Also, I looked into gear ratio's, and yes I guess they do have greater then 10x, I assumed from one of the statements above that 3rd or 4th gear is usually neutral, meaning 1:1 meant to the wheels, not just from the back of the engine. But back to the car, it's torque is on par with the average car, and its motors can rev say, 4x higher without substantial losses in torque, I would put a 4:1 hub inside the wheels right before the motors, just like they do on dump trucks.