this one smacked me right in the face at about mile 383 on the odometer. let me come at it in a round-about way.
automatic transmissions are stupid. i do not say stupid to mean that i find the choice of their use to be dumb, but rather, that they cannot hold a candle, with respect to gear selection, to any competant and reasonably attentive one of us monkies behind the wheel. a short example: you are in high gear, on a flat/level grade, with no adverse environmental conditions to be terribly concerned about, and are applying only enough throttle to keep you moving at a constant rate of 50 MPH. a hill approaches. the hill is steep enough such that if you continue at your current amount of throttle, you will stall before cresting it. you are able to eyeball it, however, and see that a downshift is not necessary, provided that you apply 100% throttle, which will yield only a 18% decrease in speed at the crest. the hill *is* steep enough such that if you applied only 50% throttle, you would have lost approximately 45% of your speed upon having reached the crest. so you gas it and poot right on up without issue. if you had an automatic, you WOULD have experienced it downshifting. if you provided full throttle, you'd likely end up in 3rd for the first half of the hill and 4th for the last, or something similar, if you left the throttle where it was, it WOULD have kicked down into 4th at least... automatic transmissions are blind, they have no concept of the road ahead, no foresight, no hindsight, no prior knowledge of the road 1/3rd of a mile ahead, etc etc. any potential fancypants technology present in a vehicle to make the automatic act more like a manual is nothing more than an attempt at compensating for the inherant poor decision making skills of an AT. automatic transmissions are stupid.
i find that the brains in charge of the IMA are similarly stupid. aaron cake alluded to reaping the benefits of being able to extract a condition of both IMA assist and continue to be in lean burn.
i *WANT* a lever, very much like the lever controlling the hydrostatic drive of a snowblower or lawn tractor. this lever would give me manual control of the IMA. i want to be able to increase the amount of assist given by IMA without having to pump more gas into the insight's belly. if i see that hill coming, i choose to stay in 5th and apply full throttle in a normal car. the insight offers more -- it has this assist/charge thinger. with the IMA, i should be able to see this hill coming, smack the assist down to full-open, and then add only as much throttle as necessary to climb the hill. then, i would manually rear the lever back to charge as i descended.
i would like to be able to set the lever amidships to keep the insight from using charge/assist at all.
keep in mind, i have this thought without any intimate knowledge of the judgement process the ECU uses about how to employ the IMA, but it would be nice if this manual IMA lever could be toggled on/off. while off, it simply doesn't exist and the insight makes judgements as it sees fit. with it on, it would utterly override the ECU's decisions -- the ECU's decisions would be sent to the bitbucket, or otherwise dealt with gracefully, and i would have complete control of that lucious little torquebooster powered by the X # of hundred pounds of batteries sitting nestled ~14 or however many inches behind me.
those whose drives are hilly stand to benefit the most from this. if your drive involves several rolling hills with flat spots in between, and a large descent at the end; such that with a maximal assist/charge cycle on each hill, you lose 1 bar of battery, such that 50% of the way through the course of hills, you're down to 49% or less battery and it is force-charging you 2-3 bars in the flats, leaving you with 20% full battery at the end, at the beginning of the hill that charges you so completely that the charging shuts off 70% of the way down the hill, you would stand much to gain from manual control over the assist.
that's an elaborate theoretical path of travel, i admit, but consider how many times you've had to either do a delecate dance of dickering with the throttle just to try to get it to do some assist and stay in lean-burn, all the while wishing that you could get it to throw some full assist at you without you having to spend another 3" on the gas pedal and demolish the MPG you've been holding gingerly between your teeth, only to be at the stop light 1 mile down the road with a 94% full battery meter laughing at you. the IMA assist has to be toyed with and manipulated in the same manner as an automatic transmission and this is a shame.
i unflinchingly bet two pints of my blood that any hypermileage insighter could annihilate their current MPG trends after only one week of use of a properly implemented and functional manual-override IMA Charge/Assist selection mechanism. perhaps it is just me, but i cannot imagine that this has not occurred to others ( i admit i have not thumbed through the 17 pages of the turbocharging thread <G>), nor can i think of any modification i could crave more.
automatic transmissions are stupid. i do not say stupid to mean that i find the choice of their use to be dumb, but rather, that they cannot hold a candle, with respect to gear selection, to any competant and reasonably attentive one of us monkies behind the wheel. a short example: you are in high gear, on a flat/level grade, with no adverse environmental conditions to be terribly concerned about, and are applying only enough throttle to keep you moving at a constant rate of 50 MPH. a hill approaches. the hill is steep enough such that if you continue at your current amount of throttle, you will stall before cresting it. you are able to eyeball it, however, and see that a downshift is not necessary, provided that you apply 100% throttle, which will yield only a 18% decrease in speed at the crest. the hill *is* steep enough such that if you applied only 50% throttle, you would have lost approximately 45% of your speed upon having reached the crest. so you gas it and poot right on up without issue. if you had an automatic, you WOULD have experienced it downshifting. if you provided full throttle, you'd likely end up in 3rd for the first half of the hill and 4th for the last, or something similar, if you left the throttle where it was, it WOULD have kicked down into 4th at least... automatic transmissions are blind, they have no concept of the road ahead, no foresight, no hindsight, no prior knowledge of the road 1/3rd of a mile ahead, etc etc. any potential fancypants technology present in a vehicle to make the automatic act more like a manual is nothing more than an attempt at compensating for the inherant poor decision making skills of an AT. automatic transmissions are stupid.
i find that the brains in charge of the IMA are similarly stupid. aaron cake alluded to reaping the benefits of being able to extract a condition of both IMA assist and continue to be in lean burn.
i *WANT* a lever, very much like the lever controlling the hydrostatic drive of a snowblower or lawn tractor. this lever would give me manual control of the IMA. i want to be able to increase the amount of assist given by IMA without having to pump more gas into the insight's belly. if i see that hill coming, i choose to stay in 5th and apply full throttle in a normal car. the insight offers more -- it has this assist/charge thinger. with the IMA, i should be able to see this hill coming, smack the assist down to full-open, and then add only as much throttle as necessary to climb the hill. then, i would manually rear the lever back to charge as i descended.
i would like to be able to set the lever amidships to keep the insight from using charge/assist at all.
keep in mind, i have this thought without any intimate knowledge of the judgement process the ECU uses about how to employ the IMA, but it would be nice if this manual IMA lever could be toggled on/off. while off, it simply doesn't exist and the insight makes judgements as it sees fit. with it on, it would utterly override the ECU's decisions -- the ECU's decisions would be sent to the bitbucket, or otherwise dealt with gracefully, and i would have complete control of that lucious little torquebooster powered by the X # of hundred pounds of batteries sitting nestled ~14 or however many inches behind me.
those whose drives are hilly stand to benefit the most from this. if your drive involves several rolling hills with flat spots in between, and a large descent at the end; such that with a maximal assist/charge cycle on each hill, you lose 1 bar of battery, such that 50% of the way through the course of hills, you're down to 49% or less battery and it is force-charging you 2-3 bars in the flats, leaving you with 20% full battery at the end, at the beginning of the hill that charges you so completely that the charging shuts off 70% of the way down the hill, you would stand much to gain from manual control over the assist.
that's an elaborate theoretical path of travel, i admit, but consider how many times you've had to either do a delecate dance of dickering with the throttle just to try to get it to do some assist and stay in lean-burn, all the while wishing that you could get it to throw some full assist at you without you having to spend another 3" on the gas pedal and demolish the MPG you've been holding gingerly between your teeth, only to be at the stop light 1 mile down the road with a 94% full battery meter laughing at you. the IMA assist has to be toyed with and manipulated in the same manner as an automatic transmission and this is a shame.
i unflinchingly bet two pints of my blood that any hypermileage insighter could annihilate their current MPG trends after only one week of use of a properly implemented and functional manual-override IMA Charge/Assist selection mechanism. perhaps it is just me, but i cannot imagine that this has not occurred to others ( i admit i have not thumbed through the 17 pages of the turbocharging thread <G>), nor can i think of any modification i could crave more.