What features on your ULTIMATE fuel economy instrumentation?

[diesel_john]

first pic my first fuel computer circa 1977. used magnetics on the drive shaft and a little pancake shaped fuel meter with a circular groove inside running horizontal around the groove was little black ball about 1/4 " in diameter each time the ball went around it traveled between a light and a light pickup. counting the fuel volume. it works well till the ball turned to gue, from the fuel. worked on any engine that didn't have a fuel return.


next pic the new computer i just got working, works on any mfi engine, uses vss signal and pulse width to compute current economy.

[mopo3]

I would want mine to store every piece of info about my car into a data historian. tire pressures, oil pressure, fuel flow, ambient temp, engine temp, cars weight, bearing vibrations. Anything that can be measured.

[dremd]

On TOP of my list would be 0-5v line indicating Load, could be used to trigger all sorts of things.

Programmable output lines would be great. Something to swith Alternator On/ off BMW style would be great, another with A/C linked to a cabin air temp sensor would be great as well.

More data is always good.

Cadence, I like it on my bike, might be cool, easy to implment.

[dcb]

Can someone help me understand what exactly cadence is in the context of a car?

[diesel_john]

cars should have pedals, for when I need to move up 10 ft in a traffic jamm.

[trikkonceptz]

How about the ability to limit your throttle, that way even if you mash the pedal under an economy setting full throttle would not be applied, thus controling your consumption in certain modes ...

[guitarterry]

To answer your question metrompg. Just 2 things. 1. Mpg cruize control. it would need adjustable minumum and maximum speeds for going up and down hills. Also it would need adjustable gain so that again as you are going up and down hills it would be able to adjust how much you slow up and speed up. 2. would be downloadable stats with the ablity to add gauges. example would be if you wanted to monitor the oil in the rear end (differential) you could add that function. With this system any car could use it cause its expandable. kind of like plug and play on the computer.

[trebuchet03]

Real time updating 3d maps!

Let me plot data of velocity (x) rpm(y) and fuel consumption (z).. Or maybe load on the y.... Whatever the case, I want to be able to change what is displayed on each axis

I think that, or something like it, would be an ultimate feature.... Although it requires quite a bit of math which I haven't done in awhile

[RandomFact314]

Originally Posted by Silveredwings

How about a traffic jam warning?

They have this on my garmin, works pretty well. It actually re-routes you if the traffic jam is heavy enough...

[RobertSmalls]

*A BSFC map with a blip indicating where you're operating and a vector indicating which way you want to move throttle and RPMs.
*A road load indicator breaking down how much aero, rolling, inertial, and gravitational load you're experiencing, and a summary of those loads at the end of your trip.

Announcing a complete solution to mapping engine efficiency
If only there were a commercial application for this system, a major automaker would have built it already. I guess it's up to hobbyists and academics to build it.

*A navigation system with traffic and hills forecast. The hills forecast would let hybrid drivers know when to build up and run down the traction battery state of charge. This might already be available, I don't know.