[ausev] DC or AC motors - which make the best generators?

[Gil Dawson]

At 10:37 P -0700 6/2/08, Gil Dawson wrote:
>Regen isn't worth a whole lot, anyway.

At 12:21 P -0500 6/3/08, Ian Ward wrote:
>Regen is more important to some than others.

You're quite right, Ian.  Hills do make a big difference.  I had 
forgotten how many times I had wanted an altimeter in the car to help 
me estimate range.  Using the EV1's crazy Range-O-Meter (which 
somehow integrated recent performance history with SOC) our rule of 
thumb was ten miles per thousand feet.   That's enough to matter.

Running around on the flats as I mostly do, it's hard to say how much 
braking regen helps.  I rarely get anywhere near the bottom of my 
personal SOC limit, so a few per cent more might not make a whole lot 
of difference.  But regen's contribution could be larger than a few 
percent; I don't know.  I can't think of a way to measure it.  (My 
S-10E doesn't have a coast-down button.)

In short, I guess I didn't know what I was talking about.

Thanks for catching that.

--Gil