Men vs women in the EV revolution

There's some interesting stuff about women vs men. gas2.org/2014/05/28/study-men-and-women-drive-electric-cars-differently/.

Aidan said:

There's some interesting stuff about women vs men. gas2.org/2014/05/28/study-men-and-women-drive-electric-cars-differently/.

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I note that one of the conclusions of the study was that a more accurate range estimator is needed. But of course it's impossible to estimate range accurately because the car can't know what the future driving conditions will be.

Gas cars seem to do just fine with no more than a fuel gauge. I guess it's the limited range of current EVs that really forces the problem, hopefully longer-range EVs such as the Bolt will make this less of an issue.

SeanNelson said:

Aidan said:

There's some interesting stuff about women vs men. gas2.org/2014/05/28/study-men-and-women-drive-electric-cars-differently/.

Click to expand...

I note that one of the conclusions of the study was that a more accurate range estimator is needed. But of course it's impossible to estimate range accurately because the car can't know what the future driving conditions will be.

Gas cars seem to do just fine with no more than a fuel gauge. I guess it's the limited range of current EVs that really forces the problem, hopefully longer-range EVs such as the Bolt will make this less of an issue.

Click to expand...

I agree that a perfect guess-o-meter is impossible. However, my friend's Volt's range gauge is order of magnitude more accurate than my Leaf's gauge. I don't know about the Spark EV, but I suspect that the Bolt's gauge will be fairly accurate.

And while more range will help, there will still be discomfort zone. It's just farther from home. The other concern is refueling. When is the last time you worried about your gas light coming on because you weren't sure if you could find a gas station that was open? If QC were more common, and the infotainment systems contained useful information (my Leaf tries to list local charging stations, but fails miserably), then you could also reduce range anxiety. Basically, we need to get to the point where you can be reasonably confident that, when your "low battery charge" light comes one, you are still within range of a QC station.

I believe the car really COULD know what future driving conditions are likely to be.

It can know...

Your route
The terrain over the route
The prevailing speeds
Weather, especially temperature and wind
Your general performance compared to the baseline

Using the above, I think the range estimates could be vastly better than what we have now

The guessometer in my Focus is especially stupid. Once I was running low on battery and drove the last five miles to my house (mainly downhill) quite slowly. A few blocks from my house, the thing told me I had 2% battery and 70 miles range. As I drove up my driveway a minute later, I got a "battery depleted, stop safely now" message.

michael said:

I believe the car really COULD know what future driving conditions are likely to be.

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Your right in that if you're programmed a route into the car's GPS system then it has a lot more info on which to base an estimate. As far as I know none of the EVs right now have their GPS systems tied in that way - but it seems like it would be a pretty sensible thing to do.

Tesla's have route elevation and speed based range prediction.

Tesla have made a fantastic range estimation on the energy utilisation screen.
We changed the settings to show battery percentage instead of "rated km" as it is more useful.

We enter a destination, and Tesla navigation tells us estimated battery percentage at destination, and round trip.
As you drive, the navigation continues to refine the estimates and you can get warnings to slow down to reach destination if you are not paying attention.

Not fool proof, but very useful.

Zoomit said:

Tesla's have route elevation and speed based range prediction.

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i3 has similar calculations based on elevation, speed limits, and traffic. It's easy to see because the predicted range will change immediately when you enter a destination.