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Old 07-31-2011, 08:39 AM   #29 (permalink)
cleanspeed1
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland View Post
My data is based off of real life driving of EV's along with comparing my results to the published results of others as to how much energy it takes to go a given speed and how much energy per mile an electric vehicle tends to use, even the winning car in the Solar Racer competition used 1,200 watts to go around 55-60mph in a super streamlined vehicle that weighs around 350 pounds, so a vehicle like that could do a cross country road trip running off a lawn mower engine powered generator, but every electric car that I've driven uses at least 5 times that amount of energy to go down a flat road.
I'm not saying that a design like the mother earth news published will not work, but I am saying that how they write about it and word their claims tend to be miss leading, because they say that it can do a handful of tasks but they never say that it can do all of them together, they never outright give it's specs with it's limitations, like they say it can go 90 miles on a gallon of fuel but how far can it go on 5 gallons of fuel?
The solar racer that I cited above went over 450 miles on a single charge and they said that to go that far they needed 90% of the power to be coming from the solar panels, 1,000 watts of solar while drawing 200 watts from the battery and if they went faster and started drawing 1,400 watts then they could only go 225 miles.
That is why I think that a hybrid like that first off needs more batteries and 2nd needs a larger generator, because the claims that are being made don't agree with the math from real life use and testing, I'm not saying that it will not work but it will not work as well as it could or as well as you think it might from reading the plans.
So that we are clear, the comments were not directed at you Ryland. I have taken what you are saying just because you and rmays actually own EVs and have experience with them. You had nothing to do with what I said.

Based on what I have seen so far, I can see where improvement can be made, most importantly in the controller that he used because although it is really simple, it requires a person to do too much stuff while driving, where all you should do is just get in, turn a key and go and all the functions of accel and regen are not seperated from the gas pedal.
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