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Originally Posted by RobertSmalls
Having a fuel economy gauge is very helpful, but a fuel economy gauge will tell you heading down a hill at very high speeds is good, braking is not bad, and heading up a hill at full throttle is bad. We know all these things are untrue.
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The goal of our research, of which this efficiency estimation is only a small part, is to be able to tell you what you should do going up a hill, in real-time.
As you say, a simple fuel economy gauge is difficult to understand in an optimal way. I'd like to see an energy gauge, one that calculates how much energy is being expended instead of just saying average economy. This would take into account potential energy and kinetic energy, for instance.
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I'd like cars to come with a BSFC gauge, and a road load gauge. The BSFC gauge would tell you how efficiently you're producing power, and the road load gauge would tell you how much power you're using. Although your project doesn't (yet?) give the output in real-time, it would still improve my driving.
I would like to install one of your boards in my car. Perhaps I can help find where your road load model deviates from reality.
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I admit it sounds interesting, but you're driving an Insight, and I have no way of measuring power flow in the electric circuit. To make matters more interesting, you have a CVT, which again makes life a little harder. If there's a way to log all that data while driving, then I can work with it. Otherwise, I'm afraid that the only way this would work on the hybrid would be if you could completely disable the electric motors for your tests.