• 0 Posts
  • 37 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle









  • You could say the same for a finite element model. A junior engineer with just 4 years of training can solve, explicitly, the deflection at the center of a slender, simple-simple beam of prismatic section and produce an exact (if slightly incorrect) answer. Building a FEM of the same can solve the problem and take longer (to make the model) with similar accuracy, both of which are good enough for design work.

    Only a fool wouldn’t have a FEM around though, as it can solve problem that would take centuries for a human to solve. They may as well make a cartoon with the child digging a 3” hole in beach sand and then showing a backhoe making a jagged edged hole of the same size.








  • Any braking without energy recovery is wildly wasteful. Public transit (busses, trains) are fucking terrible wastes of energy due to their large mass and frequent stops. Hybrid and/or electric busses are, in this respect, potentially far superior to their diesel counterparts. I’m not a train person (engineer…train…haha) but I don’t think even the all electric trains use regenerative braking and there are few battery powered trains in service.

    I’ve spent the last year altering my driving habits when I can. I try not to be an asshole when others are around/in traffic, but when I’m not pressed I will coast to a stop as much as possible (esp uphill) and use hills to gain momentum. Over 6000 miles, I’ve raised my overall mpg around 18%.


  • Not quite. EVs can still do door to door transport, are faster portal to portal, and have a vastly more diverse infrastructure, including the ability to (at least in a limited extent) traverse areas without track or road infrastructure. Public transit is still better, especially for rail, in reducing energy losses due to wheel deformation, reduction of human fatigue and dependence on attentiveness, and in some cases station to station speed and net air resistance per passenger mile. Since this is technology instead of fuckcars, it seems reasonable not to circlejerk too much.


  • In traffic, the largest reduction of efficiency comes from accelerating and the braking. You use energy to start moving (proportional to m V^2) and then you dump that energy into heat in your brakes to stop. The second comes from idling where you use energy to keep the engine rotating. As others have mentioned, EVs use regenerative braking so a substantial portion of the energy used to slow and stop the car is used to recharge the battery. EVs have no need to keep an engine running so unless you’re running the a/c there are minimal demands on a stopped/idling EV.

    On the highway, you have the internal friction in the drivetrain to overcome, the constant deformation of the tires, and - most importantly - wind resistance, which is proportional to cd x rho x V2.

    Cd (drag) and rho (air density) are low, but that V (speed) squared means driving at 75mph incurs 25x the energy use as driving at 15 mph. An EV gets no sage harbor here - plowing through a fluid (air) is essentially the same work.

    To give you a sense of numbers, my vehicle (F150) gets less than 10mpg the 5 miles to my local pool/gym. The speed limit is 25 mph but there are stop signs every block or two. Lots of braking loss. On back roads with gentle curves and a 45 mph limit I get close to 30 mpg. That’s the sweet spot between overcoming transmission friction and air resistance. On the highway at 60 mph I get 22-23 mpg. At 78-79 mph I get 19 mpg. These are all generally on flat stretches using the 6 min average on my dashboard.

    (Sorry for the long post…I’m an engineer and mechanical efficiency and aerodynamics are my happy place)