Talk:VK 45.01 (P)

Constant maintenance?

If this is the same drivetrain design that was later used in the Ferdinand/Elefant, how could it "require almost constant maintenance"? What does that even mean, literally? The co-driver has to sit on top of the engines while driving to keep them running? He has to clean the sparkplugs every time they stop the tank? Every night before the crew goes to sleep? "Constant" is a very relative thing when used figuratively; it is very unlikely that the word is used literally here. In any case, they must have improved things quite a bit in order to get the drivetrain working well enough to serve in the Ferdinand. And was it the gasoline or the electric componenet that caused the trouble? The Elefant used different engines, and it seems as though it must have been improved, although again, I'm not sure what "constant" means. Some people would say that aircraft engines require "constant" maintenance, since they need to have all their spark plugs removed and cleaned, and various other things checked, cleaned, removed, etc, very frequently. What is there to "constantly maintain" on an electric drivetrain, anyway? The brushes? Bearings? I also see that the system is clealry stated as two engines of 300hp each, while the Elefant page just says "2 x Maybach 210 engines, 600hp". Is that 600hp EACH, as one would assume, or 600hp TOTAL, which would be much closer to the orignal power rating. I may have to fix that.

Idumea47b (talk) 04:42, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Copper

How could the problem be that "the Third Reich was unable to obtain quality copper for the electric motors and generators" when Germany was building electric-powered Uboats by the hundreds. They were obviously able to obtain quality copper in fairly large amounts. They might be forced to choose between saving it all for U boats and using some of it to build tanks, but they could certainly get copper, and were perfectly capable of getting quality copper for building electric motors. "Unable to get quality copper" is clearly not a reason why the prototype failed. Even if they had trouble getting quality copper to build whole fleets of tanks, they certainly would have used the correct material to build the prototypes; if these had mechanical issues, it was not likely that these were due to "poor quality copper". If the prototypes worked well and production ones failed frequently due to the copper being replaced with inferior grade metal, that would be plausible. But Germany knew well hopw to build electric motors and made thousands of them that worked just fine. If the copper had anything to do with it, it was because they had a equal-if-not-superior competitor that didn't put additional demands on their copper resources.

Idumea47b (talk) 06:45, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

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