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benswing

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 5, 2013
Messages
47
Location
Montclair, NJ
Hello! EV drivers often take meticulous notes on their driving experiences so they can better predict the behavior of their vehicle. I'm interested in what data everyone collects and what patterns you have found.

After driving for a week in cold Mid-Atlantic weather (mostly between 35-45F with rain and 50/50 highway/city), here are a few highlights of what I've collected:

My driving efficiency has been between 2.2-3.44mi/kWh (plug)

Turning on the heater knocks about 20% of the range off, but turning it off returns those predicted miles.

Getting about 2.7mi/bar on the "fuel" gauge.

Control through large puddles at highway speeds is very good (did not mean to test that characteristic, but it happened).

Level 2 charger is a MUST!

So far I have found the range prediction at the beginning of a trip to be pretty accurate. For example, at the beginning of my drive into NYC last night it predicted 49 miles. I drive 45 mi with 4mi of predicted range left. Just gotta be consistent with the gas...er electric pedal.

Again, this is only from 1 week of gathering data and I look forward to hearing more insights!
 
benswing said:
Level 2 charger is a MUST!
You must drive a lot more than I do. I have yet to find the need for an L2 charger myself. I drive around 20 miles each day with rare occasions to drive up to 45 miles.
 
Ben:

I have had my I for a month now. Can confirm that the range indicator is pretty accurate if not using heater. In fact, I'd say it tends to be a bit on the pessimistic side as on several days I have made the 17.5 mile trip to my employer using only 14-15 miles off the battery. But, using the heater, for me, has meant a lot more than 20% reduction. I'd put it closer to 40% on some days. I am not that far from you, in suburban Philly, and have had the same weather. I am able to go without heater for the most part, but I cannot wait for the more mild weather. Some days my range indicator has shown 72-73 miles...I'd love to see if it can actually do that on a single charge.

As far as the level 2, I just trickle charge. Overnight I start at between 1/3 and 1/2 full, I am always full in the morning. If I were to own the car, I'd probably get an EVSE upgrade. But since I only have 23 more months and no PRESSING need for the faster charge, I am sticking with the 110V charging. My employer has many locations on the West Coast where they have installed level 2 chargers in our buildings. I am betting that not too long from now they'll do the same here. As I am the only EV owner so far, I'll be able to take advantage of the charger when they set it up.

Lou
 
We are driving our i-MiEV now for 8 month. Winter is horrible and we have given up on the guessometer. The problem is we are living one third down behind a hill. The hills do cost and guessing is very difficult and depending where we go. Our maximum range between charging has been 120 kilometers and the turtle was giving us a fit. Those 120 km have been autobahn and we did not know if we would find the charger at the other end. Since that time I try to keep the chargers no more than 70 km away from each other when we go long distance.

Range is far better than the guessometer would tell us but it has shown us 164 kilometers when we actually got 120. Driving less economic gets us further. So hitting the pedal when we climb up a hill is better than creeping up. Driving through the hills and back is fine and the meter predicts very nicely but the other direction getting home from the foot of the hill could take us 4 bars or more. It is good we know 4 places we can charge, all of them quite close to the foot of the hill.

Heating does cost but not as much as the guessometer makes us think.
 
benswing, congrats on becoming a recent new iMiEV owner and thanks for sharing your data with us.

Whenever the heater is used, any efficiency numbers become nonsensical as the heater energy consumption can overwhelm that used for propulsion. I kept meticulous track of mine last year and, although I still track it, I gave up recording as a function of miles driven when I started using the heater. My overall (non-heater) average was 4.2miles/kWhr, with details here:
http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5744#p5744
which includes links to the detailed spreadsheet covering 8000miles.

Once winter goes away, you'll probably find energy use at 4-5miles/bar on the 'fuel' gauge, unless you're a leadfoot.

Recharging provides 4 fuel bars for every five hours of charging at L1, whereas L2 yields about three bars/hour.

Unless you are an inordinately heavy-use driver, you might find L1 sufficient for your needs, although L2 is handy when you pop into the house for a couple of hours knowing you're about to put on another 40 miles soon.

For a while we had a similar thread called metric musings

Incidentally, peterdambier, we don't insult our Range Remaining (RR) gauge by comparing it to the Leaf's GOM - considering it has no external inputs (e.g., GPS predicting track or crowdsourced datatpoints) and recognizing the need for consistent driving and terrain, it has proven to be a very reliable RR predictor - and it seems to not store heater use in its memory.
 
Sorry, no insult meant on our Range Remaining (RR) gauge. It is the unpredictable landscape and the unpredictable wheather.

Driving over the hill and down to the Rhine valley gets me almost 20 kilometers for free, except in winter. Climbing up the hill and rolling down home will take those 20 kilometer away again right at the moment I want it the least. That is not the cars fault. The other problem is the unpredictable driver. I just come from learning that speeding up the hill takes less energy than creeping up although it gets the needle far out of the green.

We are usually driving some 30 to 70 kilometers and often more that is why I had to learn not to blindly trust the range remaining. After all a fully charged RR has given me from 72 to 164 kilometers depending from where I came home from and what the weather was like. Living on the country side and between the hills is not the usual place for an ev but we have shown we can do it nonetheless.
 
Hi Peter,

Could you please explain further about the economy driving uphill and why accelerating or speeding uphill is better than climbing ?

Thank you.
 
peterdambier said:
... I just come from learning that speeding up the hill takes less energy than creeping up although it gets the needle far out of the green.
Ooooh, Peter, methinks that will be a hard one to defend :roll:

For some of our newer members and dealing with our Fun with Data topic -

Here's a post which graphically demonstrates the situation where the Range Remaining display shows less than actual miles to destination, yet the iMiEV made it, with RR to spare:

http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=960#p960

Here's a post which graphically demonstrates the situation where the Fuel Gauge (and not just RR) actually went UP on long downhills:

http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=993#p993
 
Thanks for all the great information.

I will need a level 2 charger primarily because I live about 20 miles outside of NYC and I swing dance regularly. I make that trip at night, then only have about 6 hours of charge time before I head off to work the next day. No charging at work (yet...) means I need to get all I can in a limited time.
 
Somewhere in the manual, dont use accelerator pedal to keep the car hanging uphill in front of a traffic light. That costs energy and could ruin the motor controller.

When the motor is not turning reverse EMK is zero. The coils seem to have no resistance. A lot of current is flowing without the car moving. When the car is moving fast the motor is turning fast. Reverse EMK is high. High resistance little current. Of coarse that is a bit over simplified. Moving the car costs energy too but a standing car consumes energy without moving when the motor is driven. Creeping uphill is somewhere in between. Speeding uphill takes more current but less time. I guess there is a sinusoidal curve with an optimum speed and going below or above that speed costs more energy.

The hill I have to climb up is very steep and gas engines have to use second gear mostly. Our 105 horsepower station wagon could do it in third but the gas pedal met the floor and it was not gaining speed. Our i-MiEV moves the needle far right and outside the green when I try to keep 60 kilometers per hour, the speed limit for this passage. Staying in the green I am loosing speed until the car is creeping uphill between 20 and 30 kilometers per hour.

The peak is 368 meters high. The Rhine valley is 90 meters above sea level. Steepness is 7.5 %. Length is 9 kilometers.

http://www.passknacker.com/paesse_details.php?pass=1647

It is not Pikes Peak but Karin and me are living in Europe after all and climate and landscape are supposed to be more civilised :lol:

Speeding is not our normal way of life but we do have some obstacles in our county that need more power to climb over or you might be starving in front of them.
 
@ Benswing.

I STRONGLY suggest you go the http://evseupgrade.com/ route first. I would have, had I known just how easy and effective it was going to be. This will effectively give you a Level 2 charger for under $400. After which, you can decide if getting a semi-permanate, wall mounted Level 2 charger for your home/garage is worth the added cost/convenience.

For me, I have both. I started by purchasing the GE Wattstation for my Garage. This is great, wife loves it, very convenient, no cables to drag in and out of car when you get home.

However, I STILL ended up doing the EVSEupgrade about a year later. Having a mobile charger that charges me in nearly half the time (even on 110) that the original unit did has just proven to be a total game changer. Now if I'm going to visit friends or family, even when they are at the upper end of my range, I can actually get a useful charge (enough to make it back home) while using 1 of the many 110 outlets they have available. I just use an extension cord (12 gauge mind you) and charge right in the driveway. If they have a 220 clothes dryer plug, or anything else in ease of access, that's even better.
 
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