Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
The number of "tricks" available to improve the efficiency in an EV are way more limited than in an ICE. Avoiding the brakes matters a lot less with regen. There's not a discernable efficiency gain running more or less load on an electric motor, meaning rate of acceleration hardly matters. There's no "driving with load" or "pulse and glide".
Cruising speed and tire pressure (but mostly speed) tend to be the biggest efficiency factors. I doubt a significant difference in efficiency would be observed between my wife driving an EV, and me.
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While the differences should be less, driving style can make a significant impact.
Some people see driving an EV as a free pass to efficiency, but that's not the reality.
Acceleration at a modest pace has an unavoidable minimum hit, but accelerating more briskly reduces efficiency, heating the controller, pack, and motor more. I can't really speculate exactly how much, but it's one of the things that makes racing my i3 less fun. (More than a couple of minutes of balls out driving puts it into overheat protection.) But what a lot of drivers in general fail at, EV or otherwise, is predicting traffic, and that can have a huge impact on regeneration potential as well.
More savvy EV drivers and us attempt to never use the brakes, while the less savvy are always throwing energy away by constantly tapping them or blasting up to stopped traffic and obviously throwing a good portion of energy away. Likewise, people who are constantly on and off the throttle also multiply the inefficiency losses over time, as even regeneration at best is still well under 90%. (80-85% is the number that is floating around in my head.)
So bad drivers still get bad efficiency and drag the numbers down.