I'll "second" that regen is important. Another example is city driving. If you have a lot of hills and stop & go every few blocks, regen can add a lot of range, even if it's only 70 or 80% efficient.
I don't have an obvious way to measure this. Has anyone else done so? The closest I can come is a poor measurement done in my minivan. About 24mpg on the freeway if I drive carefully. Around 12 in the city. That ratio should roughly translate to any vehicle. Still, I don't know how much regen would recapture. Besides its own losses, there's wind loss. Under 30mph I'm assuming that's pretty small. I guess I could compute it, but that would still be full of assumptions. Best would be to measure with and without regen. Regardless, regen is an important feature to me. Comes before most other things. Peri -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bruce EVangel Parmenter Sent: 16 March, 2014 1:49 PM To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List Subject: [EVDL] How can regen be a reason to buy or not? : EVLN: Fiat 500e EV> close to perfect Way-way back when it was decision time, do I put my name on a long-long waiting list to only lease a GM EV1, or do I get a conversion that can seat 4, that will be mine, and possibly be driven by my son to school? I chose to have a 1985 Chevy S-10 Blazer converted to electric, and drive it right-away. my drive train choices the converter (Solar Electric, now defunct) had was a Curtis controller and an ADVanced DC series motor (no regen), or there was a shunt motor and controller Zapi (had regen) was selling. But everyone was satisfied with the first, and near no one had the latter. The person who had a conversion shop up in Sacramento, CA (who also had the U.S. distribution rights to sell zapi chargers. He had built a conversion using a shunt motor and a Zapi controller that had regen. It was an OK drive, but I knew my Blazer would be heavy after the conversion (2 tons in fact), and I did not believe the shunt motor and controller where up to the job to handle the load. Too bad because I really wanted regen. Regaining some miles is good, I planned to go everywhere and anywhere in my EV, which included mountainous driving. The problem with going up, is you will need to come back down. And in a 2 ton EV without regen, that is brakes pumping all the way. As I found out, after some fun up in the mountains, and then pumping the brakes to safely get back down to the valley (home base), it felt that I would soon need another brake job. So, while regaining a few miles is good to stiffen the pack, my just as important need for regen in an EV, is dynamic braking. At EVS-21 I especially liked the regen ACPropulsion had on their pih. They mounted a slider just under the shifter, so the driver could adjust the regen on the fly. I knew if I were up in the mountains, I could set the regen to max and use almost nil friction brakes coming back down. So, that is how regen became doubly important to me. Now a days, all production-plugins use AC motors and controllers that have regen (but may not allow the driver to adjust how aggressive that regen is, i.e. have drive-style/type settings: normal, eco/long-range, sport/performance, rain/snow, etc.). Regen and how much control I as the driver would have over it, is important in my next EV purchase. I would say just as important as my charging ability (and we all know how much of a charging-nut I am). {brucedp.150m.com} - On Sun, Mar 16, 2014, at 07:33 AM, tomw wrote: > /How can regen be a reason to buy or not?/ > > You mean compared to what color the vehicle is, what wheel covers, LED > running lights, what size computer screen...? - -- http://www.fastmail.fm - A no graphics, no pop-ups email service _______________________________________________ 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) _______________________________________________ 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)
