Appeal For Commuter GPS Logs To Aid Electric Cars

holy_calamity writes "A team at Carnegie Mellon University has begun a project seeking to design a kit to cheaply convert secondhand cars into cheap, electric ones suitable for commuting, if little else. They hope to rely heavily on smart management software to extract as much efficiency as possible from regenerative braking, and knowledge of terrain from GPS tracking. But they are hampered by a lack of public data on how commuters actually drive. Their solution is to appeal to GPS users to upload .gpx log files of their commute to the team's site. The data is plugged into a simulator that reveals how much cheaper an electric car could do your journey, and an anonymized public dataset will be created. A programming contest will award a production electric car to the coder who designs the best management algorithm using it."

Comments

CMU can pay for it.

[tjstork]

Only a dope should turn over their data to CMU. CMU has a ridiculous endownment, every federal incentive and bonus imaginable, ridiculous property rights and almost institutionalized military support. So, they can come up with a few pennies to pay people for their data that they stand to make even more millions of dollars on.

Re:Wow, look at that:

[JWSmythe]

    I love the speed limit argument, let me play too! :)

    Speed limits, and the optimal speed varies by vehicle!!!!!

    Every engine has an optimal speed. That's generally 1700 to 2200 RPM.

    In my car, optimal cruise RPM is 2200 RPM.

    I tested at identical RPM (2k RPM) in 5th and 6th gear. 6th gear was more fuel efficient.
    I tested at identical speeds (The speed limit, 70mph), in 5th and 6th gear. 6th gear was more fuel efficient.

    The remainder of the testing results were in 6th gear.

    At 70mph, I got 24mpg.
    At 75mph, I got 25mpg.
    At 80mph, I got 26mpg.

    86mph is 2,000RPM.

    Optimal cruise would be approx 95mph.

    Many 4 cyl cars are turning something like 4000 RPM at 70mph. These cars are obvious candidates to slow down a little (or a lot!)

    I drive my car for the best fuel economy. I coast to stops. I accelerate in the best way for my car. I don't like spending any more than I have to in gas. I cruise at the best speeds I can for my car. That still puts me as what you consider to be bad.

    I've driven cars that are built to cruise at 55mph. In those, I cruise at 55mph, and annoy other people. Sorry, I'm driving for the vehicle. I don't mind driving the faster car though, as I do get from Point A to Point B faster. I would appreciate if there were modifications to the speed limits, to allow for variations in vehicles. Maybe a typing system, where performance cars that do operate better at high speed, are allowed to go faster. That would also restrict vehicles that should operate slower, to better speeds for them.

    Actually, I'd just be happy if people knew what lanes to drive in. Slow to the right, fast to the left. If someone comes up behind you, yield to them. And god damn it, stop making right turns from the left lane!