What do you think of electric fans?

[rorax]

I've never heard anyone talk about this, but mechanically driven fans are very consuming... Motor trend made a video testing out different types of fans on a small block, and though a thermal clutch fan seems to be the most efficient out of those that they tried, (direct drive steel fan ate just over 30 ponies) it still isn't exactly ideal...



Yeah...
It did occur to me that the test subject is a V8, which is nearly double operating speed of a diesel, and therefore the diesel would have less wind drag at high curves. The effects of any fan are going to be way less noticeable at lower RPM since wind resistance is exponentially proportional to velocity. I would still think that it's significant enough of a performance drop to consider going electric. Reliability would be questionable for me personally though, I generally tend to stay away from electronic devices in my engine compartment. One may want to consider keeping the original fan in the trunk on long road trips in case something breaks and you get stuck in a hot place with no fan... That's another thing, if you overheat you can continue to keep an electric fan on as long as you want. Not only that but you can make it go max speed without the throttle.

A (rather large) 150 watt fan equates to about ~.2 HP drag on the alternator.

Are electric fans just a thing everyone uses that I don't know about yet? Or is there a reason people don't like them? Maybe with a diesel the drag is too minimal to count. I know that my friend's Audi Q5 (diesel with same rev range) uses electric fans, and I'm sure a lot of or maybe even all new cars use them.

Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXdLgaFXZzs

What's everyone's opinion on this? Anyone here go electric? Share your reasoning whatever your preference