Estimating altitude gain range remaining?

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acensor

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 15, 2013
Messages
371
Location
Southern Oregon
Most of us at one or other time will face the question before leaving on a proposed trip near the outside of MiEV one-charge-range if the fully charged traction pack has enough capacity for the trip.

Not too difficult after a little experience and calibrating the car and our brains to plug in the miles(or kilometers) and various proposed possible cruizing speeds and we can make darn good estimate.......As long as the route is reasonably level or with reasonably short balanced up and down portions.

But what about if the outward route is a sustained uphill haul? Like say 30 miles steady climbing with a 5000 foot altitude gain?

Of course, assuming the climb is reasonably constant slope and speed about the same, I coruld start out the route and after the first 15 miles the RR meter would be giving a reasonable estimate of range remaining and in the future I'd have so-to-speak a calibration of how costly in battery capacity per mile THAT climb is.
But what if you don't have the luxury of either pre-calibrating the slope or going out on the trip with the option of turning back if the first 15 miles indicates you don't have sufficient range remaining for the climb?

So, any ideas or empirical experience on, say, estimating how many feet of vertical climb at any particular speed a fully charged pack will get us up?

I suppose it should not be that difficult to estimate the MAXIMUM vertical climb by converting the energy stored in a 2700 pound MiEV lifted 1000 feet into kilowatt-hours.
Unless I did my conversion wrong (possible), I come out with, interestingly enough (based on an empty driverless MiEV wieghing 2700 pounds) that it theoretically takes darn close to exactly 1 kilowatt-hour to raise the car 1000 feet (assuming no friction and no air resistance, etc).
So if I got that right that sets an absolute cap of 16,000 feet of climbing on a full to dead empty traction pack.

But anyone have anything more realistic than that?
 
I did a 56 mile trip a while back. There was a pretty steep climb of 2,000 feet (with a quick drop in between the climbs) in the last 15 miles or so that ended up pulling almost half a charge (6 bars). Overall, the trip took 14 bars, leaving me at 9 miles RR. On the way back, I made it home in colder weather with 5 bars left.

Another trip I took was 48 miles and fairly level, and it used 11 bars, leaving 5. So, I'd say a bar extra per 1,000 feet?
 
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