There have been many times in my journey through the seasons of life when the learning curve seemed like a vertical wall at times. Learning to use real regenerative braking is one of the factors I have had no previous experience of in driving EV's, since until the last 30 days, I had only driven conversions. For me, the new Spark EV has a wonderful feeling; I definitely am well acclimated now to what I think of as "Lee Hart driving", which I did not begin to practice with any consistency until I was driving my last conversion, which was the first to use lithium cells instead of lead acid. My first years of driving electric owed more to the influence of John Wayland, Rich Rudman, and the other pioneers of the NEDRA clan. I don't speed much anymore, but I really still liked QUICK! But, for the last 5 years, I have been much more concerned with increasing my range by learning to apply the lessons I have picked up here by reading posts from all over about how people have stretched their range by careful driving. Today, I left my house with a full charge completed, (with special thanks to the EV Saint who provided my new EVSE!). The Guessometer showed an 83 mile range, which is 1 less than what I have seen for full charge; I drove the 3.1 miles from my house to the bookstore, and was quite pleased to see the new reading showing 85 when I arrived. I had never seen it go over 84. There are slightly more down grades than up on the way into town to the store, but it is the first time I have seen it go up past what it was when I left home. I am learning to use the low gear range approaching stops to the point where I very seldom have to use the brakes, and shifting into neutral on downgrades whenever it is safe and practical to do so. This will be the first time I have the opportunity to really track how many miles I drive on one charge and see what my real world range is in the conditions I normally drive in, which is much more surface streets and country roads (45-55 mph) than highways and freeways. And, it is COMFORTABLE! Really got my EV Grin on again!! Michael B -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20161201/9fd1c5aa/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
