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IIHS wants more nags

Source: Drivers quickly learn to skirt limits set by partial automation systems

. . .
In the second study, a different group of IIHS and AgeLab researchers examined how the driving behavior of 14 people who had never used Tesla’s Autopilot or any other partial automation system changed over a month of driving a 2020 Tesla Model 3. Unlike the Volvo study, this one focused on how often the drivers triggered the system’s initial attention reminders, escalated warnings and emergency slowdown and lockout procedures.
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In total, the volunteers drove a little more than 12,000 miles with Autopilot engaged. During that time, they triggered 3,858 attention-related warnings from the partial automation system. About half of those alerts occurred when they had at least one hand on the steering wheel...

bwilson4web Sep 19, 2024 Read More Replies: 84

Which cars are safe for the other guy?

What to do about America’s killer cars
cites a study of crashes involving two vehicles and a death in which the weight of the two vehicles varied. As we get more EVs we get more weight in a vehicle and while the article doesn't go in depth on the statistics, it does cite weight as killing the person in the lighter car significantly more often than the person in the heavier car. A 1,000 pound weight difference raised the fatality rate 47%. So while you may be safer in that big heavy vehicle, the other person isn't. The weight of the average car has increased from 3,400 to 4,100 pounds 1990 and 2005 and probably more since then with the popularity of SUVs.

mikefocke Sep 16, 2024 Read More Replies: 13

Munro on KIA EV9

Sometimes Munro focuses on minor technical data and miss the mountain:

Two out of three ain't bad:

Wye motor performance
Delta motor performance
Missed - step up/down Wye, power transformer
- Driving one Wye leg doubles the voltage on the other two.
- Driving two Wye legs halves the voltage on the other.
- Power is limited by what the motor can handle.
- Most 800-to-400 VAC converters limit the charging power . . . inefficient and expensive.

Regardless, here is the video:

Motor performance is nice, effectively a two-stage 'tranformation' but the built-in voltage doubling is the real gem. I have long thought about a home, fast DC charger, but the cost of a 40 A , 240 VAC transformer put me off. But if I can get a salvaged KIA 9 or IONIQ 5 motor, problem solved for a fraction of the cost.

Today, my NEMA 14-15 circuit, limited to 40 A at 240 VAC, can provide 9.6 kW. But both of...

bwilson4web Sep 13, 2024 Read More Replies: 1