[Normand]

Is it possible to get forced ima assist, sort of a revert "regen mod"
if we could press a button to get Motor Assist, we would need less gas to climb a 2min hill or short hill.
To get motor assist you need to press on the gas therefore consuming more gas, let say double of what you were using prior to pressing gas.
by pressing on the button, the assist would be full and gas at minimal keeping your lean burn mode.
Does it make sense?

 

[Delta Flyer]

I think that would be a nice feature.

Also add a forced charge to that.

 

[Rick]

I really don't know the logistics of actually doing it, but I've speculated in the past that since the assist works off vaccum pressure that creating an intentional vaccum leak in the right place could potentially cause assist to be used more. Thats all I'm going to say, I don't know if it would actually work.

 

[Guillermo]

2 minute hill climb would drain the battery.
Engine is more efficient at high load and low RPM (highest power per fuel consumtion ratio).
So it makes more sense to climb a hill in 5th gear and use significant assist but only if the hill is short....

 

[flunkysama]

I've often dreamed having direct control over the IMA via a second "gas" pedal or a trigger on the shifter. You know more about the road ahead and you can make better decisions about the amount of assist/regen than the computers in your car. One could maintain a steady speed in rolling terrain while keeping the gas pedal steady.
The problem is that the first step would be to reverse engineer the protocol that the ECM uses to communicate to the MCM. Or reverse engineer the MCM. Neither of which is very trival.

 

[Foxpaw]

rrrm, the obvious problem with this suggestion being that using the IMA instead of gas will generally result in more overall gasoline consumption as the fuel required to restore the charge in the battery will be greater than that saved by using the motor - hence why the only energy "saved" by the IMA is that recovered during regenerative braking.

However, it would be nice if there was some "IMA agressiveness" you could set as (when my IMA was working properly) I usually got more regen than I used in assistance.