Actually, I think that would be a dumb cruise control because it would vary vehicle speed widely in order to maintain energy/mile in a pre-selected range, resulting in the scenario that Lee described and angering other drivers. It may work fine on almost level ground, but be a real pita to other drivers on widely varying grades. I can see the semi trying to maintain speed up a hill riding your a** and cursing. You may think that you wouldn't set the energy/mile low enough for that to happen but how do you know what to set the min/max limits at for a given trip, especially on an unfamiliar route? I think you would end up frequently re-adjusting the limits.
But humans accomplish this easily. Just depress the throttle enough to maintain the speed limit, or around 5 mph below on up hill grades, and coast down hill (around zero battery current) until vehicle speed increases to x mph above the speed limit and gently ease up on the throttle to apply enough regen to slow down about 5 mph, coast again, repeat. The variable x is usually about 8 mph for me. My car has more than enough regen to slow as needed, including when I come up behind a vehicle going much slower downhill and cannot pass (the driver would have to intercede in this case with a min/max energy/mile system). A cruise control could of course be designed to accomplish the above driving pattern, but it would control based on min/max speed rather than energy/mile, and it would also have to be reset every time the speed limit changes. That's pretty much how current cruise control works except it attempts to maintain one speed. I think there are important priorities in addition to maximizing energy efficiency, such as safety and maintaining steady, optimized traffic flow at or close to the posted speed limits. -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/Smart-cruise-control-tp4685950p4685976.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
