Sport mode ... not to reduce efficiency over normal mode. Really?

[PatsVolt]

The common term used to describe gas pedal feel is Tip In response. And it is true that with an electric traction motor this could be really wild ride if it was done in purely linear manner. What is interesting is that you could put all kinds of Tip In feel. You could even have a configuration in the cars software that could be set from 0 to 10 with the 0 being the lightest feel (mushy) to 10 rip your head off and suck the wind from you response. That could be fun.

P

[scottf200]

FYI, todays blog is related to this topic.

http://gm-volt.com/2010/12/13/effect...ncy-and-range/

[1795]

I always use sport mode and get the same EV miles as my wife who uses normal mode. I just wish I could change the default setting when starting to sport to avoid double clcking drive mode each time.

[daryllafferty]

I don't understand why quick acceleration uses more energy. As a physicist I know that it takes the same amount of energy to accelerate something quickly as it does slowly. If the final velocity is the same, the total change in kinetic energy will be the same. So why does it take more energy to accelerate the Volt faster?

I can see with an ICE, where flooring the pedal injects extra fuel into the cylinder. Is the electric motor also less efficient for some reason when it puts out more torque? That's the only explanation I can think of, but perhaps I'm missing something.

[tboult]

I don't understand why quick acceleration uses more energy. As a physicist I know that it takes the same amount of energy to accelerate something quickly as it does slowly. If the final velocity is the same, the total change in kinetic energy will be the same. So why does it take more energy to accelerate the Volt faster?

I can see with an ICE, where flooring the pedal injects extra fuel into the cylinder. Is the electric motor also less efficient for some reason when it puts out more torque? That's the only explanation I can think of, but perhaps I'm missing something.

Voltage is constant so increasing power need to accelerate aggressively requires increasing current. So since the power loss due to wire resistance in the windings increases as the square of the current the motor's losses are a factor of I^2 R. More acceleration requires more current increasing loss quadratically. Not as bad as an ICE loss but still noticeable.

[thequickad]

Why can't Sport mode be left on without it getting reset everytime you turn off the car? For those of us who are not tree huggers, we bought Volt over Prius for performance, not economy.

(yes and maybe the Green sticker for the CA HOV lane).

[scottf200]

Why can't Sport mode be left on without it getting reset everytime you turn off the car? For those of us who are not tree huggers, we bought Volt over Prius for performance, not economy. (yes and maybe the Green sticker for the CA HOV lane).

This has been talked about for a couple years. Changes the responsiveness of the pedal. So if you significant other or kid are doing the car driveway shuffle or pulling out the garage and it was "jumpy" as in sports mode responsive it could cause a problem as you could imagine.