Journal Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: I owe Bill Dog continuation, Prius Hack ideas 10
Bill's last set of answers, and my answers to his answers
>>1. The only reason to run the gas engine under 25 miles an hour [â Typical residential speed limit] should be for recharging and generating, period. EV mode only at low speed.
>And Toyota may have started out planning on along those lines, but may have gotten focus group research that indicated people preferred a little more acceleration.
Which is weird, because when you put the two electric motors working together, you have MORE acceleration than the gas engine alone. 104 HP vs 70 HP.
>>2. An expert mode should be available wherein "creep ahead at stop" is disabled
>Having switched to owning only manual transmission cars, I only miss that on a metered freeway onramp, that's uphill. I imagine it's added behavior when in electric-only mode, to simulate a slush box, so not sure how it could be universally defeatable. There's no "neutral" on those smug little cars?
There is, it just doesn't auto-engage. The default is creep ahead (and yes, it's electric- it is quite obvious that your gas engine has stopped and it's in stealth mode- which makes it even more dangerous for say, a pedestrian in the cross walk in front of you, no warning roar of the engine as the car speeds up to 8mph slowly).
>>3. Cruise control should also be able to be set by a numeric keypad, and should be able to handle values lower than 23.
>That's an awesome idea, rather than having to bring the car up to the desired speed manually. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's the government disallowing the latter.
It certainly gets them more speeding ticket revenue in 20mph and 15 mph zones. That, and thanks to the "delayed reaction" in the CAN of the prius, I can never seem to hit the correct speed. Always 1mph off, either above or below. And why does slowing down below 23 erase the register, forcing a manual reset, instead of disengaging alone?
>>4. Sport mode should be available that disengages the traction control and enables all three motors for acceleration (you can get the second half of this in a gen2 by angrily stomping on the accelerator, it takes a second to engage, but you suddenly go from 34 HP to 174 HP as the second electric and the gas motor kick in).
>Why would a Prius owner want this?
Ice, sand, and mud. Thanks to the traction control the way it is, and the standard modes, it is impossible to get more than 34hp to the wheels in the first second of travel; and in addition to that, if there is any wheelspin at all, that 34 goes to 0 hp real quick and a little light blinks on to tell you that your transmission is disengaged. A sport mode would enable both drag racing and off road abilities that the prius currently lacks.
>>5. Finer resolution than 5 minutes on the average MPG consumption graph.
>>6. Ability to download trip data onto an SD card.
>Likely never, directly. Companies want your personal info to go to "the cloud" first, so that they can mine it and monetize you further.
I'd even accept an upload to the cloud if I could get fine resolution consumption and the ability to diagnose my driving habits after the fact. The big change in driving a prius isn't so much the technology, it's the feedback given about your fuel consumption, and it occurs to me more feedback is better.
>>7. If gas tank 20% full and battery 20% full, hibernate mode on computer if accidentally left on and wheels are not moving. Right now if you tried to use a Gen2 prius as a backup house generator, you run the risk of bricking the system, unable to boot computer, unable to add more gas, must drag onto a flatbed and tow to Toyota to use their fancy charging system to bring the car back to life.
>I guess you're saying these cars have no under-hood starter battery like ICE vehicles, that's user-swappable with a replacement from any auto parts shop. And I guess neither can these cars be jump-started, simply by using another vehicle (with a battery of equal or greater cold cranking amps). Wow.
More of an in-the-trunk starter battery that is only good for booting the computer system. If you run out of gas *and* the high voltage battery goes totally flat the most you will be able to do is boot the computer, the high voltage battery is needed to spin M1 to be the starter motor (M1 does triple duty- it's a 34 HP electric motor that does the initial acceleration, serves as a generator, and also serves as the starter motor for the gas engine- and it runs off the high voltage battery; M2 is a 70 HP electric engine that can also double as a generator, and then E1 is the gas engine that can send power to the wheels, to M1, to M2, or to all three- quite a complex computerized transmission runs it all). So there would be good reason to provide a hibernate mode that would allow a Prius to be parked for more than three weeks.
I suspect that a plug-in conversion and/or a Gen4 plug in prius is the answer to that last problem- if you're feeding off the grid regularly, there's no need for the gas engine to generate power to begin with.
thoughts (Score:1)
1) It seems like, given a non-lead foot, the most power would be required at getting going and accelerating when already at a high speed. I wonder why they didn't do like GM did later with the Volt and, as I understand it, have it in EV-only mode as a rule, except only when extra oomph is needed, or when the battery is running low.
3) The no cruise below a certain speed thing might not be so much that CC shouldn't be used below a certain speed, as it shouldn't be used on the kinds of roads where you drive
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1) That might be part of my problem- I have had trouble to adjusting to the "light touch" needed for proper prius hypermiling video game playing. I have always been a bit of a leadfoot, and so I do have a problem with rabbit starts.
3) Yeah, that's probably the reasoning. I use it in 25 to 35 zones all the time though, and it really increases my mileage numbers, but that's related to my comment 1 above.....
7) that would take a heck of a jumper cable to deliver the 273 volts and who knows how many amps to
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From that latter link I learned that hybrids can only travel 0-2 miles on electric-only. I didn't realize that they then must have really only a fraction of the batteries that electric cars have.
And makes me realize that "hybrid" just means mix, and not in any given proportions. As in, it has two drivetrains, but it doesn't run on 50% electric and 50% gas. I see that the Yaris for example with a Toyota 1.5L I-4 is rated at 30/37 MPG. I guess to make that 51/48 MPG, in a larger and heavier car, with ver
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Yes. Of course, I bought mine second hand- I let the first owner pay for their "clever programming".
I do note that many of my wished for hacks *did* eventually appear, in the 2012 model year, with a variety of body types.
And that we're now down to about $3000 for the plug in and additional battery capacity modification. Parts anyway, labor extra.
Rube Goldberg is so jealous (Score:1)
To me the Prius has to be the worst possible way to make an 'electric' car, with all those transmissions and computers, ugh. The gas engine should only be connected to a generator, and the batteries can provide for all the jack rabbit starts you need. You couldn't ask for a simpler system, you get a 12 second quarter mile, and all the range the gas generator can supply. I do hope that the marketing people will let such a car be built some day.
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The Dodge Ram Contractor is built that way- plus it's a full size, full power pickup truck that provides 48KW 120 volt outlets on the remote jobsite.
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Unfortunately it's not. It still has that silly 'hybrid' transmission connected to the gas engine. What a kludge. There should be no transmission at all. Just electric motors (forklift motors are ideal) on all four wheels without a gearbox or driveshaft or differential. (which can also be used for braking) I'd rather see something more like the diesel-electric locomotive setup, with the added batteries for good acceleration. The generator should just automatically come online when needed. The simplicity wou
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Yeah, you're right. Contractor started out that way, but did NOT make it into production that way.
I do know of a homebrewed race car that runs that way......he once wired it wrong in an experiment and did a quarter mile in 9.2, completely emptying a 3kwh battery pack.
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White Zombie [plasmaboyracing.com]?
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Yep. He's also recently done a hybrid version by adding a Honda Generator that he can remove for the race, but use for driving around town.