# NetGain increased 160% all DC Series Motors prices



## ekthor (Sep 1, 2012)

Hello guys,

Have you noticed? The "venerable" Warp line of motors are not found on many stores that used to sell them for the last 2+ years: ThunderStruck, EVWest, EVTV, ElectricMotorSport, etc. Do you know WHY  It was not a pandemic issue. Was it?

NetGain just updated their prices on their website to increase 160% ... (ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY PERCENT PRICE RAISE)

*The Warp9 was $1,750 it is now $4,650!!  and as usual -of course- they do not include a controller. *

The Warp 11 is now $8,000, it was less than $4,000 

Are they forcing the EV community to go for their SRIPM kits? For about $5K you get their motor and controller.

*If they want to extinguish a good old master piece motor because DC Series is only 88% efficient*... some 5 to 8 points below their new motor, then *they should sell all of them at a lower cost, not otherwise*. Yes, DC Series require maintenance, but if you avoid the Zillas HV at full power and monitor RPM and heat, this motors can be maintenance free for about 8 to 10 years.

Meanwhile ICE Motors are still 20-25% efficient and they are still on production and sadly they will be around for many years.

Q: "*Who killed the Electric Car* Conversion business now?" 
A: NetGain




















Best regards,

ekthor
Mexican EV Builder
🇲🇽


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Netgain don't make anything. They buy (maybe to spec) motors made by others. Surely their cost to order those motors has skyrocketed.

I doubt they just woke up one day and decided to crank prices from $1700 up to $4000.

That said, I haven't heard of anyone buying one of their DC motors in... years. For the cost of one of their motors you could buy an entire used EV.


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## ekthor (Sep 1, 2012)

You are right Matt, Warfield make those DC motors, in words of their own CEO George Hamstra

In any case, the question is still: why in the world, nobody is making those motors? I love their simplicity and their Controller-independence, this motors are beautiful, I still use and sell AMD 9" DC Series motors, got a batch years ago. As you know when used in pairs, this motors can act as a single unit, providing more RPM or More Torque, depending on how you connect them: Series/ Series, Parallel/Parallell, S/P, or P/S, so you gain a free "e-gear", something no single AC motor pair can do.

See
General Electric DC Motors: gone forever since 12 years or more. I used several 9" and 6.7" motors, they were great.
Advanced DC Motors a.k.a. AMD: gone forever, not in production
"NetGain" (Warfield): almost gone, not sold in stores anymore
Kostov: ? This guys offer interpoles, nice to have and test, but they are far in Europe.
D&D: too small motors for a mid-size car
Any other brand? you name it please.

My question again: why the industry is not making them anymore? Efficiency? Maintenance? Even AC motors need maintenance: they have encoder issues, some do not rotate as expected and AC motors are tied/married to a controller brand most of the time, with a few exceptions using Open Source Controllers like P&S, etc.

I got a call from an engineering company yesterday who wants to replicate DC Series and AC motors, I will not let this motors die. HPEVS is better IMO but expensive too.

I just arrived from a Rally, the 8th edition of the Mayan Rally in Cancun area Mexico, using 1 x AMD 9" motor, with 200 mile range in my 2002 classic beetle, no regen... not a problem the car can coast freely, I just miss regen at breaking the car, not all the time. I drove the car more than 1200kms in 4 stages, the only EV among 120 classic cars from the 20's, 30's, 40's.. up to 70's

I showed CRUISE CONTROL, a very comfortable way to drive, using a nice home-made circuit that disconnects itself by pressing the break pedal
I showed RPM monitor, with indicators to the driver to shift gear at 3,500RPM, I could alarm the driver if the motor goes 7000RPM using the classic "check engine" light bulb.
I showed ECO Mode
I showed Turtle Mode at low battery
The rally was in a very hot area, I was prepared to turn on air fans in both the Motor and controller, they ran "fresh" all the time, my air cooling techniques were enough.

Now I'm converting a train that tows 80 people in a park, using 9"DC motor and 48V, as the park needs low speeds. My Charging system will connect the battery modules at 144V to accelerate charging.

The revenge of the DC Series Motors has just started.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Steel is next to impossible to get and copper is bloody expensive is why.

You can whine all you want but nobody is going to supply you or your engineering company pals with the steel - they are all maxxed out for capacity. And when you're maxxed out, you sell to those willing to pay higher prices.

This of course means that used motors will also go up as too many people turn to them as an alternative. 

So the only recourse is to repurpose salvage, but with used cars up, former to be parted out cars are being repaired to road use.

This insanity will be with us for the next 6-10 years unless gasoline collapses back to $2.xx/gallon. Even then, the momentum is now unstoppable.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

I may have remorse for selling 2 warp 9 motors in the last few years 😩 sold them pretty cheap.


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## Chewcoo (9 mo ago)

elevatorguy said:


> I may have remorse for selling 2 warp 9 motors in the last few years 😩 sold them pretty cheap.


I'm still working on getting that escort built. Don't you worry, I will get there eventually! The controller should come in on Wednesday!


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## BobD (Dec 26, 2012)

I still have a WarP9 lying around in the garage. It has about 30 hours of use on it when it was in my Porsche 924 conversion. Some of the gel batteries in the Porsche died when they hit -25 for a couple of nights, but the Logi-Systems controller and WarP9 were fine when I removed them and sold the donor car.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

ekthor said:


> My question again: why the industry is not making them anymore? Efficiency? Maintenance? Even AC motors need maintenance: they have encoder issues, some do not rotate as expected and AC motors are tied/married to a controller brand most of the time, with a few exceptions using Open Source Controllers like P&S, etc.


Brushed DC are not made in significant power levels because no significant market exists for them. Yes, efficiency is an issue. Yes, maintenance is a bigger issue.

The AC motor issues listed are not maintenance issues - they are initial setup issues that don't matter to equipment or vehicle manufacturers, who don't try to make random motors that they can scavenge cheaply work with random controllers that they can homebrew or hack. These are, of course, valid issues for DIY hobbyists.

The "forklift" motor fans in this forum continue to insist that these things are nearly free if you're willing to put in the work to find them. Perhaps a better plan than setting up to build a product of obsolete design from unavailable materials would be to do that salvage work on a significant scale?


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## BobD (Dec 26, 2012)

I don't think I'd say that power in the WarP9 was insignificant. The Logi-Systems controller could be set up for up to 1000 amps at 144+ volts. That's about 192 horsepower. I set up limits on the controller to keep output under 300 amps or it was too easy to smoke the Porsche's tires. And the motor's efficiency peak was around 3000 rpm so I kept the Porsche's transaxle in line to choose the right gear to give me the best efficiency. And if by "maintenance issues" you mean brush replacement that's a pretty infrequent issue. As a series-wound motor its one big drawback was lack of regen, but if the batteries hadn't been killed by freezing my next project was to mount an electric clutch and pulley on the forward motor shaft and connect it to a generator/alternator to do some charging on demand when descending hills or coasting to a stop.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

I find it interesting that AGMs were toasted by cold temperatures by just sitting in the car. Strange, actually.

I have AGMs in my spot welder and the ones that are good (a couple of dead ones in it) did just fine during the winter in a covered open environment, and we got below -20F at night here.

But, Youtubers like Damien, and fossil motor zealots like @Duncan, have lit a fire under the something for nothing crowd, which I think is how they get suckered down the DC motor path.

They certainly aren't cheaper these days (unless free) - I see a forklift motor on eBay going for $1900 which is nuts compared to an AC.

Benefits are low pack voltage and low RPM power, pretty much matched to existing vehicle transmissions and transaxles. Sadly no OEM has gone with a large diameter low RPM AC motor.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

BobD said:


> ...if the batteries hadn't been killed by freezing ...


That's not surprising, if they were discharged when they were exposed to low temperatures. I've had that with a mobility scooter, which is left in the van... sometimes with the battery when the battery should have been taken in for a charge.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

ekthor said:


> ...
> Meanwhile ICE Motors are still 20-25% efficient and they are still on production and sadly they will be around for many years.
> ...


Internal combustion engines run on fuel; electric motors run on electricity. Since fuel and electricity are not at all interchangeable, comparing efficiencies is nonsensical: the efficiency of an electric motor running on fuel is zero, just as the efficiency of an internal combustion engine running on electricity is zero. If you have only fuel, and need to run an electric motor, you will need to use one of those engines to run a generator so even a perfectly efficient motor will just the last link of a much less efficient system.

But if you insist... while electric motors can be over 90% efficient that is only near their ideal operating point; near their ideal point, modern gasoline engines run as high as 42% efficient (not 25%).


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## BobD (Dec 26, 2012)

The batteries I had that froze were East Penn Deka gels, not AGMs, and they freeze damage at -22F even if fully charged. I certainly didn't get "suckered into" a DC motor as "something for nothing" since I paid retail for the WarP9, but mainly I went with it because it was pretty much all that was inexpensively available back in 2008 compared to AC systems. I'd now sell the WarP9 at a fraction of what I paid just to see it back in use. Besides the 22-year-old Honda Insight hybrid my wife drives, now on its third propulsion pack, and equalized by a 200-volt PV array, I have a 2000-watt electric bicycle and 1500-watt tadpole trike that run with multi-phase hubmotors and both LiFePo4 and NMC lithium batteries, all PV-charged. I know that the hubmotors are very rpm dependent for peak efficiency but they are so much easier to maintain versus low-power chain-driven motor systems.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

You'll probably now get close to what you paid for that Warp9 in '08...

The only thing out there to any extent in 08 was the Tesla Roadster afaik, so agree. I was talking about DC as a choice now.


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## ekthor (Sep 1, 2012)

BobD said:


> I don't think I'd say that power in the WarP9 was insignificant. The Logi-Systems controller could be set up for up to 1000 amps at 144+ volts. That's about 192 horsepower. I set up limits on the controller to keep output under 300 amps or it was too easy to smoke the Porsche's tires. And the motor's efficiency peak was around 3000 rpm so I kept the Porsche's transaxle in line to choose the right gear to give me the best efficiency. And if by "maintenance issues" you mean brush replacement that's a pretty infrequent issue. As a series-wound motor its one big drawback was lack of regen, but if the batteries hadn't been killed by freezing my next project was to mount an electric clutch and pulley on the forward motor shaft and connect it to a generator/alternator to do some charging on demand when descending hills or coasting to a stop.


I fully agree with BobD. I've installed about 30 9" motors in different vehicles, have burned one because of high amperage (1500A), also I've damaged another due to high RPM. So both High Amp and High Voltage (Above 170V) are quite bad, not approved by any manufacturer, that's the reason of maintenance and damage: not only brushes, the commutator can explode at high RPM above 9,000. Who need such RPM? Only ego-centric EV owners that want to burn tires, speed records and... motors. I now use Optical RPM sensors that have a Digital Display, same as the venerable JLD with 2 relays built-in, so my customers get a light in the dash that advises to shift gear at 3,500RPM or any value, it is custom value. The second "JLD" relay I can program it at 8,000RPM so that I can write a text file, a syslog or ev-"black box" with values like: timestamp, GPS coordinates, voltages (motor and battery), amps, temperature and a Red light turns ON showing "Check Engine" light in the dash. Warranty is void if I find this file. DC Series motors are lovely, I can use a wide variety of controllers. Most High End Controllers are exceeding motor limits: all Zillas, the extinct Evnetics (with the exception of their 600Amp controller). And there is no AC motor that can be used in pairs and get an extra gear for free. 

Do you want to test an AC Motor without a proper controller, wiring harness, battery pack, throttle and main contactor? It's Impossible, it's a trivial task on any DC Motor and any 12V battery.

Long life to DC Series Motors!


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