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Old 03-13-2016, 09:19 PM   #35 (permalink)
Isaac Zackary
Full sized hybrid.
 
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Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Colorado
Posts: 602

Suzy - '13 Toyota Avalon Hybrid XLE
90 day: 37.18 mpg (US)
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Ok. So here's a dumb question. In thinking about the Leaf I'm going to get, I wanted to see what I could do to make it more efficient so as to drive further. My first thought was aeromods or just driving a lot slower in order to reduce air drag. But first I thought I should calculate how much is actually lost due to aerodynamic drag.

This is what I got:

Cd = 0.29
A = .725m^2
P (density of air)= 1.225
100km = 27.7778m/s

Cd x A x P x 27.778^2 x 0.5 = 99.36584N
Cd x A x P x 27.778^3 x 0.5 = 2760.162W

According to that, if there were no rolling resistance, I should be able to drive for 8.6 hours at 100km per hour, or over 860km/540miles.

So does that mean that at 100kph about 15% of the friction/loss, whatever you want to call it, on a Leaf is air drag and the other 85% is a combination of rolling resistance and battery/controller/motor inefficiencies?
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