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Florida Professor Sets Electric Vehicle Record In Tesla Model S

2K views 17 replies 15 participants last post by  germeezy1 
#1 ·
Florida Professor Sets Electric Vehicle Record In Tesla Model S
The Fast Lane Car
December 13, 2012
by Nicole Wakelin

The EPA says the Tesla Model S can manage 265 miles per charge, while Tesla says that number is more like 300. David Metcalf, a professor at the University of Central Florida has proved them both wrong by managing an electric vehicle record of 423.5 miles before the “Charge Now” light began to blink.

Metcalf set the electric vehicle record last week on a trip around the Florida panhandle with his 12-year-old son, Adam, as his co-pilot. The two didn’t just hop in the car and go, but very carefully planned their route to maximize their mileage.

They avoided interstates in favor of slower roads that took them through areas of central and southern Florida that are largely rural, although there were a few stretches of four-lane highway where they were definitely not in the fast lane. Their trip took them through wildlife parks and the Everglades, and no, they didn’t hypermile the trip in misery. It’s winter in Florida so it’s comfortable without the AC, especially at night when things can get down right chilly.

The trip took the pair 17 nonstop hours, the thought of which makes me bleary-eyed, but Metcalf says it just wasn’t a problem. He once ran a 26-hour marathon, so this stint was no big deal by comparison. Although, if you crunch the numbers, you’ll see this wasn’t just a long trip, but a very, very slow one that could have put the most caffeinated driver to sleep.

His average speed to set this electric vehicle record was a whopping 25 miles per hour.

Full article at link.
 
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#6 · (Edited)
My wife & I got a 2013 Volt recently & have been getting acclimated w/the tech, which has been thoroughly enjoyable & one thing that stands out is how you can pretty much thrash the thing almost w/o penalty. A guy in a durango was beside me at a red light & we both had pole position & when I glanced over I did get the impression that something nearby was irritating him & sure enough, when the light turned green he nailed it, For the heck of it I did too & despite the Volt running on battery only & him having a bit of a jump, the Volt was quicker, overtaking him in maybe 3 secs. I gave up at 60 (it was a 55 mph highway) & he did have to repass me but by then what is already was. I resumed driving rationally & was somewhat surprised later to find I still got 40 miles electric out of that epa rated 38 mile charge. The volt is the 1st car I've ever seen where this is so dramatically the case, you run a car hard, pay the piper. The Volt's a bit unusual, the cost of energy/mile is darned cheap & you don't gotta buzzkill to do it, well, exc in cases like this durango guy's. *bigsmileyface*
 
#7 · (Edited)
You know, getting 400+ miles out an electric vehicle with one charge is damn impressive. I've hypermiled gas cars all the time, never had the chance to do it in a pure electric. If these Telsa's can really go 300 miles on a single charge -- then the days of electrics not being practical may be numbered. Electric cars definitely make sense in Florida. Cold weather takes its toll on battery life, but Florida rarely sees much of that. On top of that (for people in Florida), set up some PV solar panels and you can nearly power the car for free year round. For people who don't want the added complexity of a hybrid, pure electric is a great way to travel. If only they could get those MSRP's down.
 
#11 ·
Why does a 25 mph average speed seem slow? Right now I'm pretty sure the average speed in my G8 isn't so high as 40 mph. Driving to lunch and other errands in the city keeps it low, despite any ability I have to time the lights in Newport News.

I'll stick it out a bit here, I'm sure, but it wouldn't be too much to guess that in ten years I will no longer be driving a car fueled by petroleum products. I love driving, especially driving fast. I never have cared for paying the oil companies, perhaps as a product of the fuel crises of the '70s, one of which resulted in my entire school having to go to school as the evening shift at another school due to a natural gas shortage. Any intelligent person will, once all else becomes equal, will willingly say good riddance to gasoline, I think. If you can fuel it with electricity made with nuclear power, as I would, or solar (even better), why wouldn't you want to?
 
#13 ·
Another guy got 460 MPG with the Volt so it's basically a bang in the face to Tesla. The only downside to the Tesla is that it suffers from range anxiety and if you run the battery completely low I've read reports of the battery losing it's zero point etc or you destroy the battery. With a car like the Volt the idea or notion of you loosing battery power or having a reduced driving range when driving on different terrains or for different driving styles is completely erased because you have a range extending mode, and a generator that recharges the battery, and a small backup engine. Not only that but the Volt itself can drive up to 50 miles on electric charge which is either more or less of the average commute that every day drivers drive. The advertising says 45 miles but I've read in places where actual buyers are averaging 50-55 miles on electric power once the vehicle as a whole has it's break in period.
 
#14 ·
I don't see where what the Volt is doing is necessarily a punch in the face to the Tesla Model S. If I could afford the model with the 85kW battery pack, I could drive all week to and from work and still have charge left over. It is one thing for me too get a power cord out the front door a couple of times a week. If I wanted to keep a Volt off the gas, I'd be hard pressed to do that on a daily basis, parking where I live being what it is. Getting the best out of either, it seems, still depends on owning a home where you can easily charge it, preferably in a garage. It will prove cheaper, at least as far as energy costs are concerned, to drive a Tesla cross country once the planned charging stations are in place. It will be theoretically possible to spend nothing on fuel and drive coast to coast. That cannot be done in a Volt , unless someone else pays for the gas. In building the Model S, Tesla has done something to get people's attention on the idea of electric cars. I don't think it detracts from Chevrolet's accomplishments with the Volt, as the Model S is anything but popularly priced. Could Chevrolet build a popularly priced electric car that can be used the way a gas powered car is used (to wit, fuel it weekly or every 250 or so miles) before Tesla does? After all, that is one thing they're working on.

Actually, rethinking the way we fuel our cars should have included, from the ground up, rethinking what we do with parking. For example, a few years ago, at a time when I was actively thinking of getting out of my condo and moving somewhere else, I looked at a new apartment complex in Norfolk, in one of the city's most fashionable districts. I asked her about parking and electric outlets, stating that I was considering the purchase of a Volt. By the time all was said and done, I found that this new building had not quite kept up with the latest thinking that would allow a Volt owner living there to charge up nightly. The leasing agent that I talked to agreed that having electric at the parking spaces would be a good idea, as the sort of person who might be inclined to buy a Volt was the sort of person they'd want to rent there. With electric cars, parking should not be an afterthought in the design of apartment buildings the way it has been. Perhaps the ideal way to design a condo building in the city might be to build the condos around high rise parking, so that you park your car in your parking space, and walk directly into your unit, even if it is several floors up. Some places might do this, but I'm sure it is fairly rare.
 
#18 ·
If the Tesla Model S had an exemplary range extender I would do everything short of panhandling to purchase one.
 
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