Friday, February 13, 2009

Three, four and more

The days at work have been long when all you want to do is get home and take the EV out for a spin. A couple days ago I went out and drove the car around a bit to get the pack drained down slightly. When I got it home I reset the watt hours remaining and capacity numbers of the BMS. I charged up and it showed about 6kwh. Last night I then took the car again and sure enough both those numbers drop when driving so this will, for now, be my fuel gauge. Eventually I'll take this data and convert it so that my original fuel gauge works as well but that's low on the priority list right now.

The drive last night was by far the best. I got the front bumper back on and what a difference a little wind resistance makes. I went for a total of 16.2 miles of mixed city and hwy type driving. I got the car to 65 mph and there was plenty of power to spare. One day I'll test out the top speed when I get time and I'm on a nice open stretch.

I was also pretty hard on the throttle last night trying to get a good feel of what the car can do. I ended up using about 6kWh. So if I drive really bad I'm still looking at a 60 mile range. I also calculated 375 Wh/mile. Considering the lead foot this is really good. I'll be trying a conservative drive over the weekend hopefully and try to estimate my best range as well.

Things are really going well! So that was drives three and four. The more is another video of the walk through. Still plan on getting the inside car ride and again hopefully this weekend I can get my neighbor to film that so I can focus on driving.

Have something else you want video of or explained better? Just add a comment and I'll see what I can do.

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