A Hypermilers Dream

Wait till he has to push it back up hill, what a nightmare.

 

That hill would be a dream for me on a snowy day with a plastic garbage can lid! (When I was a kid)

 

In the urban environment pictured, I wouldn't care for it. Inevitably at the bottom you'll have to hit the brakes and hit 'em pretty hard. Braking = wasted energy.

On the other hand, if this was in the country with no traffic and plenty of open road at the bottom, then whhheeee ....

 

+1

It's all about the gradient of the incline. The more efficiently and more controlled that you can harness energy, the more you can do with it. A slow, gradual gradient that extends over 20 miles would be ideal. In biochemistry, we use the example of those mazes we had as kids with a metal ball that you place at the top of the maze and it rolls down the "roller coaster" track, through twists and loops and over pendulums until it reaches the bottom. The longer it takes to get to the bottom and the more pendulums and other objects you can move, the more efficient it is. Why biochemistry? Fats and carbs can be burned in a car or eaten by a human. In both, the end products are carbon dioxide and water. The human harnesses much, much, much more of the energy than cars do because we pass it through an energy gradient of hundreds of chemical reactions, just like the metal ball on the maze. We harness much more of the energy before it reaches the lowest potential energy of the pathway; carbon dioxide and water. Pick up any biochemistry book and you will find the words "combustion" and "pyrolysis" referring to humans' use of carbs and fats as energy. It is because a car carries out the reaction so quickly and inefficiently, that you see the flames of fire (pyrolysis). But since humans are so efficient at harnessing the energy and the process is slow and controlled, you do not see any flames ... but the heat is there. We don't burn fuel as quickly as a car, so we don't get anywhere near as hot as an engine, but we still release a lot of heat.

 

All the stop lights, stop signs, and cross traffic will waste most of that gravitational potential. An empty rural highway gradually descending over 10-30 miles makes far better use of it.

 

I real hypermiler would looke at that street and wish it was like this. That way you would get the most distance at a gentler rate and be able to charge the battery more. :lol:

 

I have been down that street in SF, and in a Prius (rental). Let me tell you that I was braking the entire time, crawling cause of those darn turns... But it was fun, so I did it three more times that week on my vacation... I would not call that one good for hypermiling cause you are just on the brake.