Well, I think most people who have driven for several years are aware of many of the conclusions of the report, though the study does serve to quantify and document them. There have been a number of similar reports, particularly around the time of the oil embargo in the 1970’s and the passage of the 55 mph speed limit. Figure 2.2 would actually be a family of curves for each max speed since fuel savings will be dependent on relative magnitude of drag and rolling resistance forces as a function of vehicle speed, which will be dependent on the drag coefficient and weight of the vehicle. The speed at which the two forces are equal can vary from around 35 mph (light and blocky), to 60 mph (heavy and aerodynamic). Figures 2.5 and 2.6 indicate that a diy conversion could easily pace most traffic with a very modest 2 mph/sec acceleration rate, or 0 to 60 mph in 30 seconds. I suspect that the small proportion of drivers out on the far RHS of figure 2.6 don’t much care about figure 2.2 in the report (fuel efficiency as a function of vehicle speed), and imagine the haptic pedal feedback would not be too popular with those drivers.
One issue with the EPA cycle (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml) is that it doesn't offer much insight on range at interstate highway speeds, which is a significant proportion of many people's driving, and one might argue, a more important one since judging range on the highway is much more critical to arriving at a charging station than judging it in city driving where charging stations are far more prevalent. An example of this was recently in the news regarding the class action lawsuit against Nissan on battery range. One of the plantiffs complained that Nissan stated the vehicle range at 100 miles, but he had to stop and charge 15 miles from his house on the 80 mile drive home from picking the new car up at the dealer. Those of us who have experience driving evs would say, well duh, but many without such experience just go by what they are told. -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Kia-Soul-EV-goes-global-and-aims-for-120-mile-driving-range-tp4666302p4666431.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
