Smart Pedal

I've got some prime water front property for sale is south Florida, cheap!
Let's make a deal! Call br549 today!

 

That works for me too. Those studies look serious, and I'll be interested in the findings.

 

I'm just saying..... Your method of measuring MPG is ,,, something....
You know you have a display for this?
BUT, Paper and Pencil at fill ups is still the most accurate way of measuring fuel economy, at each fill up, for many fill ups.

Tell my Right Foot that I'd "save gas" while crossing the lonesome prairie.
I just got back from a 12 hour day behind the wheel, always going +5 mph the speed limit. So 75 and 85 MPH, mostly.
(The round trip was: 1650 miles - 36.3 MPG. I have not done the paper pencil math yet.)
I think I'll let the Advance Tech Package handle the car's speed. And not have my brain and right foot on that job nonstop.
I guess you're saying 'Go Slow up the hills and let it rip on the downhills'?
You know how annoying that is to others on the highway with you? I do....

You're really Gunho for this Gizmo without even doing accurate testing...

This is SO silly.....and not technical.
You said you were already a 'Hypermiler'.
Now you are attempting to "get more skills", all while supposedly doing testing?
The only way to prove this is not a Placebo is to have an accurate spread sheet of before and after adding the expensive gizmo.

Face it... Hypermiler = Slow Driver. And now you want to try to go even slower,, with 'more skills'?

That 'Drive Slow Display' the Prius has is what caused other drivers to have a problem with a Prius in front of them.

 

Well, long as you mention it, it is an efficient way of driving, and sometimes you're on a stretch of road without many following drivers to annoy.

It would be cool if that were a mode you could select for the cruise control to follow.

 

I totally agree.
When operating my Prius with the Adaptive Cruise Control working, if I get behind a slower car and didn't/couldn't change lanes before the cruise starts to slow down,,
When I do pull out from behind the slow car and the CC accelerates, it means business!
It accelerates WAY too hard.
I wish that was configurable.
But it is just for seconds. It's not worth 'Hand Driving' it. Let the technology work for you!

 

How many hundreds of dollars will someone spend to save a few dollars????

 

I don't know. But NAS, CalTrans, and NCST seem interested in finding out.

 

How silly. I bet they got a better price for these dealios than the $300 you and I would pay.
In return for their findings.

Hopefully they are keeping accurate records and will publish the results.
Are these Prii that those three entities listed above are testing?
I assume these dealios can claim to work on any throttle-by-wire car.

 

If that's true, well-designed studies will certainly show it.

 

But your method of measuring if it works,,, is unusual and far from accurate.
"On Sunday, I usually have 2 Bars...."

Go easy on those brunch Bloody Marys at those Bars, too much salt....

I think I'll wait for scientific studies.
We need more proof, other than your 'observations'.

I'm 'Easy like Sunday Mornings' on that Go Pedal.
I don't think this dealio will do a thing for me.

 

Tell that to the secretary of transportation when he said if you can’t afford $4.50 gal gas then buy an electric vehicle.

 

Wise advice!
We should all take it.
Only brand loyal toyota enthusiast are stuck with a company that thinks EV's are,,,, well, , not good.
At least they can't make a good one.

I have two EV's. Way less expensive than driving a Prius!

But my 82 mile range EV has to go.
I need a longer range for my RT commute, thus I bought another smelly gasser Prius!

 

Still waiting for rigorous findings from NAS, CalTrans, NCST.

Any updates there, I wonder?

I see this status page says "Expected Completion Date: 20221231 Actual Completion Date: 0" so I guess it's still ongoing, but might be close.

 

I just looked up the report from NCST / UC Riverside. They used satellite tracking and found, overall, an increase of just over 6% fuel economy with the Smart Pedal. (Average of 6 CalTrans vehicles)

They calculated the payback period (at $299 cost) and it was about 16 months. So I buy this thing for $300, put it in, and maybe save my first dollar in about 1.3 years. Meanwhile, I could have been earning 5% on my $300, which would pay me almost $20 in that time period. So we're looking at closer to 17 months to break even. Hmmm.
Right now, a lot of my mileage is done at 75mph (speed limit, because it really chews gas to go faster....Lexus CT200h = to a Gen 3 Prius, pretty much). That means I'm getting on the highway, getting up to speed, hitting cruise control and driving probably 80-90% of my miles on cruise control.

So I'm "thumb in the wind" estimating that it's going to take me quite a bit longer to break even. If they were driving mostly with manual throttle control, and it takes 17 months to break even, then it's likely to take me 24 months or more to break even...

Not compelling to me. Spend $300 and you'll start to save your first dollar on gas in two years.

Forget it. I'll put the $300 towards an upgraded LiFePO4 traction battery in the next couple of years and then I'll get a lot better mileage anyway.

 

$300 lifepo4 traction bat? Let us know who / which website sells at that price!

 

Haven't looked yet, but are you sure their payback calculations didn't already include that opportunity-cost part?

 

At the "average" savings of 6.29%, it doesn't break even (save its $299 purchase price) until you've burned about $4753 of fuel. For that to pay back in their stated 15.76 month, I'd need to drive 3351 miles per month. But I average much less than that each month, so will take more than 4 years to get there.

But wait. They tested only 6 vehicles, with datasets of only 548 to 2800 miles each. I need to drive over 52,000 miles to "break even", yet this study's entire data set across all vehicles appears to be under 15,000 miles.

Two of those vehicles actually lost MPG, "which suggests that the effect of uncontrolled parameters is significant. This study consisted of real-world operation and the contribution of factors such as changes in payload, number of passengers, driver, accessory usage, etc., is unknown. "

While it shows many decimal points of precision, I'm seeing a very tiny dataset with a huge spread, but not any listed standard deviations or confidence intervals. So far, I have absolutely no confidence that a proper statistical Confidence Interval would not straddle unity.

 

Curious if this 'thing' does anything your right foot can't do with the 'Go Pedal'.
Your right foot is the first step in being the captain of your ship.
You control the car.

I know one thing it does!
Gives you 'A-Buck-and-a-Half' when someone buys one of these silly things through your 'Advertising Links'.