I just tried to see what the Advisor is and can do. Too much info to explore, but I found interesting battery info embedded in EV models - plots showing discharge curves and internal resistance for all common battery types, including NiCd, NiMH, LiIon (all SAFT) and NiZn. This is useful for predicting performance and compare different batteries - you substitute one battery type for another from drop down menu and the plot immediately reflects performance changes.
In light of recent IN-1 thing, I'll try for fun to "put" NiZn in it as well as PbA (for reference) and NiMh and see what it says. Many options are not implemented (grayed out) but the models are available (free) and you can modify them. This is rev 3. Section about low rolling resistance tires impact is interesting. In general thing geared toward hybrid vehicles analysis, but you can pick pure EV class (granted, many options like fuel economy, exhaust data disappear). There are specific models for Insight and Prius, you can plug in specific options (including pure EV) and see how it will do. I have good models for Siemens drive system and been doing similar simulations for max performance as well as US06 or any other NREL defined cycles. ADVISOR is nice GUI to a set of predefined java scripts running on the background. Yes, expensive Matlab and even more expensive Simulink required. Victor
