Display Total Energy

Description

Given that the car knows its speed, and the GPS knows its elevation, create a new display of NET energy consumption, which is Electrical Energy Consumption – Kinetic Energy Increase – Altitude Energy Increase. Shown graphically this could be a neat display of three sources of energy and the flow between them, similar to the displays we seen in a hybrid car.

Competitive/Pricing/Notes

Tracking the energy of the car is very powerful feedback: in the first couple of weeks our energy consumption dropped from a typical 220W/km to 190, even achieving 171 on several runs.

However, the energy consumption is only a display of ELECTRICAL energy use, and when going up and down hills you have to do a mental calculation that offsets the peaks and the subsequent valleys. This makes it hard to appreciate whether your style of driving is currently efficient or wasteful.

More usefully this would result in a current-net-energy-use figure, which cannot be regained with regenerative braking. Tracking and graphing this figure would be a great feedback for teaching us exactly the tradeoff between an efficient driving style and a more aggressive one!

As a figure that’s recorded and displayed for each individual driver Profile, it would also end some arguments between drivers (or maybe start new and entertaining ones!!)

Status

Unknown.