Vehicle Energy Use Simulator (Estimating Impacts of Weather, Roads, Tires, Cargo)

[efusco]

I have a friend, Wayne Brown, who is a bit of a geek/genious/inventor.
He's created a program that will calculate your energy use for any sort of vehicle where you can vary the speed of travel, weather conditions, climate control settings, wind direction, etc. to estimate your energy use. This is an update and major upgrade from a previous program he created that I used extensively in my early Prius owning days.

The tool estimated about 252 mile range at 70mph in an 85kWh Model S for an example.

Currently only available for MAC computers, not iPad, iPhone, or PC yet.

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Model S Energy use Simulation by efusco, on Flickr


Model S Energy use Simulation by efusco, on Flickr

[Alfred]

Very nicely done. In a metric environment a bit harder to use. In the Roadster one tends to think in terms of Wh/km and not in MPGe.

[jcstp]

maybe with this program PhoneGap he can make an app that fits multiple platforms!
it looks great his programme!

[jerry33]

That's great. I haven't heard from Wayne for a long time.

[efusco]

Jerry,
Wayne says he's keeping a "low profile", but chose not to explain. Says in the coming months he will be making a reappearance, but this is his first step out the door. Really nice tool.

Alfred, I suspect there are things in the settings to allow you to get your data or enter it in Wh/km, and if not currently I suspect he'd be more than happy to build it in.

email him at : veus-support@privatenrg.com -- VEUS for (Vehicle Energy Use Simulator)

[woof]

Very nicely done. Needs some more predefined cars (like say, a Model S?). I was playing around and it was very interesting to see how much extra energy driving on slush vs dry pavement takes.

[Robert.Boston]

What settings are people using for the Model S? We know the Cd, but not the A. And rolling resistance?

[efusco]

What settings are people using for the Model S? We know the Cd, but not the A. And rolling resistance?

The images in my original post are from Wayne's computations for the Model S. Those numbers should work. He also did some other calculations using estimated numbers for the coolant pump, monitor, etc.
What the Tesla S - cooling pump will draw, I don't know exactly but, their current system uses 146 watts and I don't see that needing to change radically. Anyway here is the list I used for the breakdown of the 470 watts that I factored into the simulator:

[Cattledog]

This an interesting app that estimates range deltas based on a number of factors. Noticeably missing is change in elevation, however it has things like impact of road surface (asphalt, gravel, etc.), weather (rain, snow, wind speed/direction) etc. For example, it shows that the losses associated with rain vs. a dry asphalt road can be between 14% and 24% depnding on storm severity. I have asked the app author to build a Tesla Model S for us as I can't begin to guess at variables like frontal area. BTW, I have nothin to do with this app, just found it interesting.

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[efusco]

Wayne Brown is a friend of mine and has been working on various versions of this program for years. He was previously looking for testers on this forum (Vehicle Energy Use Simulator). I can tell you that he is meticulous in his mathematics and calculations and the simulator is quite accurate (assuming steady state of wind speed and direction and such).

Would be nice if he had it as an iPhone app.