And qdos - you are doing a *very* good job of arousing interest!
ChrisBarron wrote:...There is a weight premium to pay, in particular for lead acid, and that impacts acceleration power requirements more than it does the power required to run at speed, but ultimately lighter is better...
OK... I guess I can see that.
Our daily driver is a Golf with an on-board travel computer, which does tend to make you think about driving habits. I've been a little surprised at some outcomes:
1) The rate at which I accelerate isn't as important as I thought. Just put your foot down (within reason) and get to the speed you want to go at and it saves spending ages accelerating up to speed.
2) Overrun and especially coasting (probably illegal... ) are big-time savers.
3) I'm not convinced that 56mph is the most economic speed; I think it might be slower, around 40mph or so. Speeding up through to 70mph sends the consumption sky-high. I dread to think what the 80/90mph-ers get to the gallon!
4) It doesn't seem to be as important to be in top gear as it is to keep the revs around 2000rpm
5) Braking is a no-no. Well, it's better than hitting the car in front, I suppose, but driving in a way that avoids braking saves loads.
To bring this back to EVs, I guess a number of these issues relate to "facts of life" and simple dynamics/entropy issues. So I guess that, the faster an EV goes, the more electricity it will consume on a per mile basis, for example?
I also guess 4 is completely irrelevant in an EV, because of the linear (more or less?) torque graph?
Ah... I nearly forgot. And of course there's the issue of accessories...
To protect the batteries, I would have thought that air con (ok, I can do without that) and heaters (in winter?? demisting the screen??) were no-nos. How do you handle that? Warm woolly socks and plenty of de-icer, or is it not as bad as I think?
Regards, David