Virtual Transmission

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ddh1313

Active member
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
26
Just for fun. How do you feel about having a virtual set of gears to shift/paddle your way through in an EV?

Here's my thoughts:

The virtual transmission would use a combination of Motor RPM, Power Output and Regen Levels to simulate gears and (this is where it might go off the rails) the torque curve of a naturally aspirated ICE.

So for example :

1st Gear (V1 displayed on the dash cluster if your particular EV happens to include one) is responsible for say 0 - 35mph . With your foot on the floor, the motor controller creates a fake power curve that exhausts near the end of the virtual gear or as the vehicle approaches 35mph and it's pretend redline/rev limiter. Having perceived you are running out of fake power, you shift or paddle into V2.

2st Gear V2 sends full (ramped) power back to the motor and it pulls until nearing 60mph as the power virtually exhausts yet again. You can do this through any number of artificial gears sliced out of the true spectrum of the EV drivetrain.

Downshifts:

A downshift will produce max regen at the top of the virtual gears speed/rpm range and will diminish as it decelerates to the lower end to simulate engine breaking. A downshift outside of the virtual gear range will produce an error tone just like automatics with a sport shift feature do.

Obviously this serves NO purpose for efficiency or max performance and would actually hurt both but I think it would be entertaining if implemented well.
 
ddh1313 said:
Just for fun. How do you feel about having a virtual set of gears to shift/paddle your way through in an EV?

About like people that pipe in simulated motor noise to the speakers from some different car. Drive a Civic, pipe in noise from a Maserati. Drive a Jetta, pipe in noise from a Porsche 911. Drive some sad old Fiat that can't get out of it's own way, pipe in noise from a Lamborghini Huracán LP 640-4 Performante. Oh yea.
 
For me it would be entertaining for about an hour and then never used again. Kind of like the manual feature of the Tiptronic transmission on my old Audi.
 
I have come to love the single-ratio aspect of electric driving, and every car I ever bought prior to LEAF was manual transmission. Unless you consider the VW "auto stick" to not be :roll: . Form follows function. I hate fakery such as fake grilles, fake wheel covers, and fake "floating roofs". Fake gear-shifting holds no appeal for me at all.
 
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