Driving test in an electric car

my most recent two cars (one diesel, one petrol) automatics, have both had 7 gears.

A steam engine would be better for that.

Why? I would have thought that the interconnection would have increased the nose up, tail down attitude when accelerating.

Well basically, once you have an EV it opens your eyes to how mismatched the ICE is to the task it’s been performing for years. Yes, we’ve got very clever at trying to turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse by using masses of mechanical complexity but when it comes to producing high torque circular motion over a wide rev range, an electric motor has the ICE beaten hands down.

Of course this has been known for a long time, it’s just taken a long time for battery technology to make electric motors a viable alternative for some folk. Alas there are still hurdles to EV ownership for many folk but hopefully as the charging infrastructure improves and costs come down, more people will be able to enjoy EV ownership.

Tim

Such as committing to building several extra nukes that we're going to need to charge all the EVs and run all the heat pumps without the lights going off?

When I was studying for my Hazard perception I was told to "double click" first click was as soon as you saw the hazard to get maximum points, if you had "jumped the gun" and clicked before the test had decided it was a hazard the second click would still be three or four points (even possibly five if you had superhuman reactions).

I learned in a Mini.

When learning hill starts, the instructor told me to use the clutch/ accelerator until the nose rose slightly. I could then safely release the handbrake.

I was waiting for that.

Same. When I was driving a friend's hand control car I found it easier to use the hand controls than try to overcome my clutch control habit.

It seems you're penciled in for 2027 and 2028.

All that means is that the test is f***ed by design.

Vir Campestris snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid posted

That was my plan too, but Saddiq Khan did me over.

I was thinking several more beyond Sizewell C

I experienced Pug's awful gearbox once. It seemed to combine all the disadvantages of a auto box, with all the disadvantages of a manual.

Awful. I even managed to stall the vehicle going up a steep ramp into a car park. Before I could react to the situation, the equally awful 'stop start' system restarted the engine for me.

They've moved away from that now, and back to a torque converter based box.

I agree that there are different types of automatic. I've only ever driven torque-converter type, probably 3-speed. I had one very bad experience with an automatic Ford Focus (hire car) which would not let me go above about 50 mph: if I tried to go any faster by increasing the accelerator, it changed down a gear and if I accelerated still further it went into first. It was a loooooooong journey from Oxford to Ipswich at a maximum of about 50 mph, being very careful not to trigger the car's kickdown from 3rd to 2nd, and cursing any slow lorries that made me slow down so I had to coax the car back up to 50 once I'd got past them. But that was clearly a duff car: I phoned my company's travel office the following morning so they could get in touch with the hire company. By the time I was ready to drive back home later that day, a new car had been delivered. Not all automatics are like that one!

A few years ago my local garage loaned me a small car (Ford Ka size) with automatic when I took my diesel Pug in for a service, and that definitely needed to be driven very differently from a manual car, when trying to accelerate out of roundabouts without see-sawing between not enough acceleration in the correct gear and too much acceleration in a lower gear than I would have used, with fractional changes in accelerator position flipping from one state to another.

I'd like to try a DSG, if I can get a test drive in a VW Golf with DSG. It would be interesting to see what it was like to drive a car that has "solid" transmission (ie fixed ratio between engine and wheels for a given gear, with no vagueness of a torque converter), and to try it in both auto and manual selection of gears. It would be interesting to see how easy it was to control the car at very low speed (eg when manoeuvring) when there is a minimum engine speed below which the transmission disengages and where the engine speed for engagement results in too fast a road speed: in a manual I'd keep my foot off the accelerator, letting the engine idle, and control the speed by letting the clutch up to bite point, maybe dipping it again to maintain a constant speed if the engine speed resulted in too high a road speed.

Many years ago (early 1980s!) I used to get a lift to work during my gap year in a Volvo with DAF Variomatic transmission. That was painful. The damn thing seemed to select a lower and lower ratio (with ever-increasing engine speed) whenever the driver increased the throttle, and then after about 10 seconds of constant engine speed after he'd lifted off the throttle a bit, the transmission wound up its ratio and the car gradually accelerated. About a vague and woolly as you can get: the exact opposite of why I like manuals.

I'm sure that modern (torque-converter) automatics have improved a lot.

I'd have been interested to try driving my dad's Toyota Yaris hybrid. I was all set to go down south (eg by train) to pick them up and drive them up north in his car, so they'd have it for driving around the area, and then reverse the process at the end of the holiday. But my parents are no longer able to make that sort of journey (even with me driving) and have just sold that car, with mum keeping her car for local journeys around their home.

As far as I know, you can force an automatic into a lower gear (eg lock it in first or second in a three-speed box) but you can't force it to remain in a higher gear so it doesn't change down into a silly gear (as defined by the gear that a driver of a manual car would choose) when accelerating away from a junction or roundabout when you slow to a minimum of maybe 20 mph and then accelerate again.

I try to anticipate when there will be a gap in the traffic on the roundabout while I'm approaching, so that if possible I can continue without having to come to a complete halt. Same applies to many driving situations. Sometimes it's possible, sometimes it's not. But on a clear roundabout with good visibility of traffic from the right (to confirm that there isn't any!), the only reason for slowing down is to negotiate the left turn onto the roundabout, the right turn to follow the roundabout and the left turn to leave it. It's nice when a plan works. A busy roundabout or one with deliberate barriers hiding the road on the right (*) as you approach scuppers those plans.

I do the same at traffic lights. If I've had a long view of the lights and seen when they turned red, I can (sometimes) judge when they will *probably* change green and I can try to keep rolling, even if slowly, so I can set off from maybe 5 or 10 mph as they turn green, rather than having to stop. A puny 1.6 turbo-diesel Peugeot (me) which is rolling at 10 mph as it reaches the stop line and the lights turn green can easily out-accelerate a sports car in the lane on my left if it has to set off from rest (**). Of course you have to plan for things *not* working out, and leave enough space still to be able to stop before the lights if they *don't* change "on cue". Probably saves a little bit on fuel not having to come to a complete halt.

(*) They say that it is done as a safety measure, to force cars to stop before checking to the right and then setting off again. Any fool can save lives by stopping everyone. It takes skill to design a road layout that is as safe without bringing everyone to a halt.

(**) I had a very funny look from the driver of a souped-up Suburu "penis car" (so-named by my wife and I because it compensates for inadequate anatomy!) when I overtook him at lights because I'd been able to keep rolling and he'd had to set off from rest. It was a "WTF have you got for an engine to be able to out-accelerate *me*?" look. With his cherry-bomb exhaust, his car was "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" whereas my car just quietly got on with the job.

I suppose the ideal combination is an IC engine driving a generator which powers electric motors (the car equivalent of a diesel-electric locomotive) because it gives the control advantages of an electric motor with the range and rapid refuelling of an IC car. But it would add to the weight. Would it add more weight that having a battery in a pure EV? Would it be less efficient than a mechanical transmission, given that on the debit side it's one extra stage of energy conversion but on the credit side the engine is working hard at optimum speed/torque instead of being mismatched to the road speed for part of each gear's range of speeds?

I wonder what the weight of a suitable generator and electric motor(s) would be compared with the weight of a 6-speed gearbox? And the weight of battery and electric motor(s) for an EV.

Are there any PHEV vehicles which have *only* "electric transmission" and don't have a mechanical connection by auto gearbox? How long does the charge in a PHEV's mini-battery last in relation to a typical period of acceleration after which a mechanical gearbox could take over for steady-speed driving and recharging that battery? My experience as a passenger in my dad's PHEV is that the motor is only used to get the car moving and the engine kicks in after a few seconds, so not exactly using the electric motor to get the car all the way up to a steady 60 etc.

I think the worst design feature of automatic cars is a wide brake pedal which encourages left-foot braking. Driving schools should be teaching drivers to avoid at all costs braking with their left foot (the only exception being to control the speed at very low speed when a higher engine speed is needed to engage the clutch than you want for the required road speed.

My driving instructor (who had been a Police Class 1 driver and later instructor before he retired from the police) said that he came down very heavily on drivers that he was instructing who used their left foot in an automatic. He said that it encouraged use of brake and accelerator at the same time, and was a danger if a driver had built up the "muscle memory" for making large movements of his clutch foot in a manual and then inadvertently made a big braking movement with his left foot in an automatic.

I remember when I went go-karting and had to get used to left-foot braking (because your legs are astride the steering column). We were warned that it is far easier to learn left-foot braking for the go-kart than to revert to right-foot braking when you get back into your car for the drive home. The go-kart track had huge signs on the way out "Remember to brake with your right foot when you leave here"!