Do you / Did you own or build an Electric Vehicle? Post photos and story HERE!!

[NeilBlanchard]

The computer model of the boxfish had a Cd of 0.06. Here's my guess as to how a taller vehicle with the same frontal area as a low and wide vehicle of the same area: since the underside of the vehicle cannot have as much of an angle as the other three sides (the ground prevents as much air flowing in to fill the lower pressure area), the the length has to be longer and/or the wake zone is larger on the low / wide vehicle. The taller vehicle gets to taper the sides equally to the top, and so the vehicle can be shorter and / or have a smaller wake zone.

Also, a square-ish frontal area will enclose more volume and that volume will be more useable than the same frontal area on a low / wide vehicle.

[PatQ562]

Glad to hear that you had an EV1. I mention it often when bemoaning the lack of progress in efficiency.....Although it is often said that the Tesla showed that EV's can be fast, that honor really goes to the EV1.

As I've said many time before in these spaces, if only GM had lost the big bucks pioneering lithium instead of NiMH. I waited to get the Gen2 EV1 to get the longer range NiMH batteries. The original (realistic) 40-60 mile range on the Delco lead-acid batteries just wasn't good enough for two 20 mile commuter trips plus lunch and shopping. Panasonic lead-acid apparently improved that range to 70-90 miles, eventually, which would have been OK for my daily commute. But my NiMH delivered 100-120 miles routinely, and 140 miles easing along on the freeway. The problem was that NiMH batteries were lossy, bleeding off power, and requiring air conditioning especially during charging, which added at least 20% to the recharge burden. This increased the 160-180 wh/mi of the lead acid version to about 250 wh/mi (wall-to-wheels). Compare this to the 250-300 wh/mi of the current Leaf etc. A lithium powered EV1 would weigh about 500 lbs less than the original, probably boosting efficiency to 150 wh/mi, with a 150-200 mile range. This easily meets or beats the performance of the best X-Prize contenders.

The EV1 was "about as good as it gets" in drivetrain efficiency, low-loss tires, aerodynamics, bearings, etc. Weight was about 3000 lbs with the old school batteries, which would have been 2500 lbs with the same volume of lithium batteries, which would have had significantly more range (and acceleration) than the NiMH let alone lead-acid. The only way you're going to get significantly better results is to cut everything by some large percentage - less frontal area, smaller cabin, lower weight, better Cd (if possible), etc etc. Small improvements are possible in drive train efficiency, but when you're already at 90% there's not much left to gain.

It all gets back to the battery technology which is finally shaping up - it appears than 10 year batteries with reasonable weights are now possible with good design.

Driving the EV1, especially when fresh, was a truly dreamlike experience - just gliding along like a bicycle coasting, then ZING (if I may say so) when you touched the accelerator (friends would shout out loud at the midspeed punch). Still, it needed better batteries, and did have quite a few problems large and small, including the DUMB inductive charger.

Pat Q