I own an 06 Prius. I use this all the time. Much of the time I am not conscious of it. I do feel it. There is a surge when the dynamic generator comes off and you enter free wheel. It is not a big surge, but noticable since this car is so quiet.

The glide point, gap between power on and dynamic generator on, changes with different speeds. It disappears, for the most part, above 40 mph. The gap is larger at low speeds and gets progressively smaller.

This can be used on clear roads, light traffic and heavy traffic. It is fun to play with. You do not need to be watching the graph to do it, though this is of help when first trying it out. In heavy traffic glide is of use to smooth and calm your driving.

PLEASE DO NOT CRITICIZE THIS WITHOUT TRYING IT. Glide on a Prius, and eventually the Volt, will be just a spot on the accelerator pedal between power on and generator on. High end attention drivers will use it to great advantage, all others will use it without thinking or effort. If you do ever own a Prius or Volt. Take some time as a passenger and look at the display. You will see at times, on the Prius, the Energy Monitor shows no energy moving. This is the spot.

On a Prius if the ICE is off then this is actually free wheeling better than any other previous free wheeling situation.

I know these things I use it to the max for my situation, yet I never PnG.

I put on over 20,000 m/yr.

Jonathan Cassidy, associate broker
Prudential Manor Homes, REATORS
jcassidy@prudentialmanor.com

What I’d like to know is, will the glide part be regenerative?

This is going to be completely irrelevant in the Volt, because the ICE isn’t connected to the wheels. The pulse & glide of the ICE (if the GM engineers to their job of minimizing fuel consumption) will be built into the control software for the ICE.

Ok, some clever people will probably figure out at what load & rpm the electric motor is most efficient and then try to keep it’s operation in that range to maximize miles/kWh, but it should be in the 85%-90% efficiency range over the whole operating regime anyway…

Maybe so, but I do it anyway, hee hee hee!

I don’t really care about “pulse and glide”. I just want to be able to maximize the fuel consumption on down grades. Based upon my experience with the Allison, I don’t trust somebody’s “algorithm” to do it for me.

I thought that calgaryvolt put it perfectly at #55. Of course, if Arch is right at #87, there is no issue here. I’m not sure I trust GM to make it that simple, but I sure hope so.

Correct.

People should be thrown into jail for this dangerous behavior. It causes snarls, traffic jams and traffic accidents.

But then again, leftists never let human life get in the way of their harebrained schemes.

I didn’t say it, but I assume a detent (a mechanism that temporarily keeps one switch position in a certain position relative to another) at switch position 3. There should be no guessing about where switch positions 3 and 4 are.

Also my proposed method of cruise control (see #80) has the same functionality as most current normal cruise controls, except that if you want coast, that is added. My Ford truck has accelerate and decelerate. My Buick has accelerate and decelerate (with one tap at a time for decelerate). But the response is relatively slow. I want decelerate to be much more responsive for coming down steep grades as well as in city driving. I also want a very steady speed control for switch position 2 when in cruise control, up and down hills. With the electronic controls available to the Volt this should be no problem. When in cruise control mode GM’s engineers can figure out when to coast automatically, I think. The problem of when to coast is not as certain when not in cruise control mode.

For the most part my proposed cruise control is very much like normal old cruise control. There are some slight differences that I propose for Volt cruise control. The driver should be able to start from a dead stop with the accelerate switch position 1. The driver should be able to slow down significantly with switch position 4. The friction brakes would be used for sudden braking and for the final stop.

By adding a hand brake control for paraplegic persons this car could be driven with hands only. This would be good, as there are thousands of people out there that require special engineering for their hand controls.

I am sure that GM’s engineers will figure out the best thing to do and whether to have a special control for coasting.

If you’re the only one on the road fine, but one of the biggest problems with traffic in not being able to maintain a constant speed. Everyone intentionally speeding up and slowing down is a recipe for disaster.