Comment by grogenaut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grogenaut | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I rented a mach-e recently. Went up to Snoqualamie pass from seattle. I used over 60 miles range in 10 miles on the steep part at the end, 1/6th. Going the other way I got a maybe 20% boost in distance over flat. There were a few places I was able to regen-brake, but I never had the battery go up, only stay flat. And a few times I lost enough speed that I didn't handle an interim flat well. I was extremely disappointed.

It turns out friction and drag are still things. On a pure downhill you would be able to roll, but it's not as good as going down is bad.

I also found that the car did a lot worse rolling down hill than my mini-cooper manual when I just put the clutch in, which got up to hairy speeds. Heck vehicle seemed to have more inbuilt resistance to just rolling than the fire engine I've run down that hill.

Overall I got 90 total miles of range and hit the flat at 10% battery. I was able to get 290 miles driving in seattle with the same vehicle.

It might have been affected by the driving mode you were in?

For instance, one pedal modes (across manufacturers) tend to much highly favor regenerative breaking over friction brakes. Of the models I've driven such modes often seem to give you better feedback in the sweet spots of the pedal curve when you are just rolling and not braking/accelerating.

Additionally, in my experience rental cars are more likely to be in sports modes when you pick them up (I think some of the rental car places may even do this as policy to make customers happier when they rent them?), and down shifting them to more balanced energy modes (Ford's is called "Engage") can mean a huge difference in practical range.

I wouldn't buy a mach-e to baby it and feather the pedal, like what's the point.

I have several fun to drive relatively fuel efficient cars that are sunk costs. I work from home, they're just getting old. I have a pickup to go do dirty things like duck hunting.

The ev seems great for driving to work (I work from home) or around town. I was very unimpressed with it's short trip range and efficiency on a hill (whole trip empg was 44). I spent half as much time at the charger as I did driving. I'm sure it'll get better. Much higher charging speed would help a lot (Mach-e is limited to 150). The extended range battery would help.

Any other sub 3.5s 0-60 under 70 evs out there? If you can't tell I don't care about pure efficiency, I care about a fun to drive car that's got better efficiency than an IC and a usable range.

The point of mentioning the driving modes is the reverse of "baby the pedal", let software do that for you. EVs are software-defined cars. They have modes that say "don't worry about efficiency, just waste as much energy as I want" and modes that say "balance efficiency with raw performance". In both you can pedal about the same and the car determines how to balance raw torque versus battery efficiency and regen breaking versus friction braking for you.

Many EVs are just as fun to drive in "balanced" modes as they are in "sport" modes, but your efficiency goes way up. Rental cars seem to think you want "sport" modes that are more inefficient because you want to rev that 0-60 more than you want better trip range. That's maybe a good way to sell the EV as fun to drive, but it's not a great way to sell the EV as useful for long trips.

The trick is the EVs already offer both experiences in their software (because they can, because that's how they work), you just unfortunately need to learn the manufacturer-specific ways to change driving modes to get the most of what you want out of a rental car rather than what the last customer wanted or what the rental company thinks you want without asking you. (If you want both experiences knowing how and when to change modes is even more critical.)

most of the trip was in the lowest (most efficient) mode...

That's weird. Seattle-to-Yakima at 70 mph average speed and 85 mph peak speed is about 1.5x the normal energy use for me (260 Wh/m vs 350 Wh/m). Leaving me with 20% of charge when starting at 100% (260 miles): https://imgur.com/a/Dhs38kJ

And this was during the wintertime, so with a reasonable amount of heating.

FWIW the mach e engages the regen brakes automatically when going downhill to prevent acceleration.

I routinely traverse Monteagle with no substantive loss in efficiency. Sounds like something goofy with the mach-e?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com