EVcast #251: PIA is POed and BB Sells EVs

Regarding regen braking. 

I have a '98 Chevy S10 Electric, factory made by GM as electric. The regen works just as Bo said it should. Letting off the accelerator invokes on a very light regen. Then the first portion of the brake applies the rest of the regen, then finally the mechanical braking.  

To hypermile, you don't want regen to slow you down, coasting is the most efficient that you can get. You should not have to shift in to neutral to do this. If I want to slow down, that is what the brake is for. I am not sure why auto-makers assume that auto-regen is a great feature. Heavy automatic regen reduces range/mileage. 

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The reason they're doing this is laziness / development costs.  The simplest implementation is to put all drivetrain torque -- positive or negative -- on the accelerator and to have the brake be only for the physical brakes.  This, of course, is really annoying.  The next simplest is to put part of the negative torque on the accelerator, the rest on the first third or half of the brake travel, and then the physical brakes after that.  That's better, but it suffers from uneven braking depending on how fast you're going (your brake may do a lot of decel early on and then little later or vice versa at different speeds).

The *proper* solution is called "brake by wire".  *Quality* EVs like the EV1 make use of this.  The pedal is either only for accel or is for accel plus a small amount of regen to simulate normal ICE car engine braking.  The brake pedal is either unconnected to the physical brakes or only physically connected to the physical brakes at the very end of its travel.  For the most part, the pedal is simply an emulator, a controller.  Multiple sensors measure (and verify with each other) brake travel and use that to determine how much braking force the user wants (via redundant computers) and then make as much of that force as possible come from regen and the rest from physical brakes (using the same sort of redundant hydraulic actuators used for ABS).

Oh, and completely offtopic but FYI: "Nikkei" is pronounced "nee-kay-ee".  Japanese syllables are very short and all vowels are pronounced, excepting when you see "consonant-y-vowel" (for example, Tokyo is pronounced "toe-kyo", not "toe-key-yo".  And for Tokyo-ben (Tokyo accent -- traditional Japanese), all syllables are given equal duration and stress.

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Neighborhood Electric Vehicles or NEV have come and gone. However, rising oil prices have really brought these vehicles from the dead. Recently, the Canadian company called Bombardier just launched the Bombardier NEV. Compared to other NEVs, this one is a lot cheaper because it only costs around 7,000 USD. So save some money so not to use payday loan.
Basically, the Bombardier NEV is a simple, small, and efficient vehicle that is built for short-distance driving. Like other NEVs, the Bombardier NEV has the standard lighting, brakes, and independent suspension. For only 700 dollars, you can choose to have detachable doors, cassette stereo system, and even stylish curtains. Also, its 25 mph is pretty decent for a vehicle that runs solely on batteries.
There’s only room for two people inside and it has limited horsepower as well. However, its pretty good steal especially with the tag price that it comes with.

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Regarding the Plural of Prius, Toyota says it is just Prius.  See wikipedia entry below.

Some enthusiasts enjoy using "Prii" as the plural, which would be correct if "prius" were a regular second declension Latin noun. The actual Latin plural of the adjective is "priora" (Reference [52] is slightly in error here). All of these forms are nominative case and there are several other forms for the other cases. As for the plural of "Prius" in English, Toyota has said that it is simply "Prius" and also that owners are welcome to use whatever they like.[55]

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Karen,

    It is an honor to have you commenting on these shows.

    Your explanation about Japanese is completely correct, however I have one thing to add.  In English, it is pronounced toe-key-yo, regardless of how the Japanese pronounce the name of their city.  For an English speaker, it is simply inappropriate to pronounce the city name the Japanese way as it would not be recognizable to English speakers.

Later

John C. Briggs

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The Best Buy segment was excellent, excellent.  That really captures the checkout experience well.

    On the one hand, I understand that a corporation wants to increase the number of dollars that they get from each interaction with the customer.  This make sense.  Also, if they are offering something of real value to the customer, this makes even more sense.

   On the other hand, don't corporations realize that they are creating a negative association in the customer's brain with their company.  I had a similar experience in Radio Shack recently.  I purchased a USB cable for the rediculously high price of $37.  The cable cost Radio Shack about $2, so the markup is rediculous.  You can buy a mouse there for $15, which includes a USB cable.  So there is no reason for the gross overcharging on the cable by itself.  But whatever, I knew that was going to happen.

    So already a little upset about this price, I have to listen to a series of questions.

    1) want batteries

    2) want charge account?

     3) want purchase protection plan
    4) fill out the survey

A totally negative experience.

   The next day, I went into kmart and purchased a diet Coke for $1.54 and had to listen to three of these types of questions.  Annoying.  Well at least they didn't offer me a purchase protection plan on my Coke.

Later
John C. Briggs

P.S. Bo, you should apologize to Kim for yelling at her.  I know you were only acting, but you can never be too safe about these things.

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Oh, and Nikki.  Perhaps "Audio Feedback" is better.  If you ask for "Oral Feedback", at some point you are bound to get the opposite "An$! feedback" which wouldn't be good.

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