Chris, you are like me. But I have also had the experience of riding with someone who does not have a "feel" for the accelerator pedal and constantly alternates between accelerating and decelerating to maintain a more-or-less constant speed. I have even had the occasion that I was driving and searching for the source of that new sound that might indicate a problem on my car: BRRR......BRRRR.....BRRR.......BRRRR.............BRRRRR.....BRRRR.....BR RRR until I noticed that it came from the lifted truck that was slowly passing me in the next lane and where the driver apparently had a digital foot, the engine was either idling or max on. No doubt that driver can save gas by using cruise control (not to mention smoothing out their ride instead of the constant jarring in transitioning from acceleration to deceleration). Both my wife and I are getting better than 48 MPG every time in our Classic Prius, no matter whether driving around town or a roadtrip down Interstate 5, so I have no desire for cruise control for gas saving purpose. In addition, I don't like cruise control and never use it since it interferes with my control of the accelerator for optimal speed, like your proposal.
Coming back to Bruce's proposal for reduction of features on the E: I do not think that any of them will result in savings for the customer. The Level 1 charger is handy to have with you *even* if you have both L2 and L3 on the car, for the simple reason that you will find plenty times that you stay for hours in a place where no L2 or L3 is within decent range, but plenty L1 will be staring you in the face. So, the $20 or so that it adds to the cost of the car (including the charger) is a good investment - you will otherwise find yourself buying one as accessory later... Tire repair kit likely has below $10 cost price, so no real impact either. I expect that XM is free (for Nissan) since it will be subsidized by Sirius, that is also why you get a free trial subscription - investment by Sirius to get new subscribers hooked. So, removing it will not save a penny on the cost price of the car and it is up to Nissan to decide how that affects sticker price, there is not always a relation. There may be things that are really a burden for Nissan, but it will be hard to pinpoint real savings when having a L3 added for increase of range. I have heard the suggestion with Tesla to *not* take the large pack but to get the fast charge, since you can make longer trips with a short stop, on the Leaf that is not really an option since the range is not excessive like the Tesla's 85kWh... (Although I am still making do with 25 mi range on my daily driver *with* primarily L1 charging.) I have the idea that the Leaf is already a well-optimized car as it is, so it will be hard to make big increments, but a lot of small increments can still make a big change overall... Regards, Cor van de Water Chief Scientist Proxim Wireless Corporation http://www.proxim.com Email: [email protected] Private: http://www.cvandewater.info Skype: cor_van_de_water Tel: +1 408 383 7626 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chris Tromley Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 11:09 AM To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List Subject: Re: [EVDL] Wanted: A Leaf EV "E trim" model On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 12:54 PM, brucedp5 <[email protected]> wrote: > > > IMO There are items that should have been kept with the lowest priced 'S > trim' model, and some fluff/junk should have been made optional to keep the > price down. On the S trim ... > > Need an option to buy a: > - Cruise control (to save energy) > - B-mode regenerative braking system (to save energy) > There will be plenty of opinions on this, but in my case every new car I've had came with standard cruise control, and it's a waste. I never use it. It's a pain to deal with even in light traffic, and it DOES NOT save energy. All it does is maintain a constant speed, regardless of conditions, which is not the path to low energy usage. Over time I've learned by using the real-time mpg readout (or ammeter) and keeping track of mpg every fill-up (or kWh/mile every charge) that constant speed is pretty inefficient. Much better to use your momentum and surf the undulations of the terrain. Let your speed drop a bit going uphill and give it some more juice going down with a gravity assist. Don't be extreme or you'll drop out of the sweet spot (and piss off surrounding drivers). Conserve and maintain your momentum. I'm not into boats, but I suspect this is the same mentality as used when sailing. Get the feel of it and you'll beat cruise control for efficiency every time. Chris -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140105/a3ec 6d4d/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
