What do you want your EV to display?

[TomMoloughney]

It seems to me many of the auto manufacturers are struggling to decide what information should be displayed in their EV. A lot of people want a more accurate state of charge meter, and perhaps a numerical representation of it rather than twelve bars as the LEAF has. How about a real time watts per mile and a gauge to measure how much energy the regen recaptured on your current trip? How much is too much though?

If your interested take a look at a blog post I just did and add you comments. I'm interested in hearing what people want to see on their EV display.

http://activeemobility.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-information-do-you-want-your-ev-to.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[smkettner]

Yes accurate state of charge and a numerical battery temperature.

 

[Nubo]

Hi Tom,

FYI, the LEAF's SOC bars are NOT evenly divided into 8.3% segments. Some bars are bigger than others. So it's even worse than you imagined. :lol:

1 - Get rid of any range estimate. Completely. A bad guess is worse than no guess. Stop it.

2 - State of Charge represented as kWH remaining. I don't care if it's numerical or graphical, it just needs to represent kWH and have sufficient resolution (tenths should be fine). The automakers' fear that the general public is mystified and afraid of kilowatt-hours is ridiculous.

3 - HONEST GAUGES! Any gauge that purports to display a quantity, should show an honest value. Any gauge that displays a range of values should have an honest and LINEAR range. I'm tired of temperature gauges that stay in the same place until a car overheats, oil pressure gauges that stay in the same place until the oil runs out, or SOC gauges where the last "bar" lasts forever. Battery-temperature bars where one bar spans 30 degrees and a different bar spans 6 degrees. Bleh. Gauges are supposed to relay information, not simply spend their lives displaying:

........................

"DON'T PANIC!"

 

[bernie82]

I'd like an accurate representation of the amount of kilowatt hours remaining in the battery. There are many cars out there that have trip computers that provide the same mileage range info that the SOC meter does. The trip computer knows how much fuel there is in the gas tank and does a computation based on present driving conditions and presents the driver with an approximate driving range. That's probably good enough for cars that have a 250 + range but not good enough for Leaf drivers with a 70 to 90 mile range.
The bars on the SOC are not precise enough for most Leaf drivers to feel comfortable taking their Leaf to LBW. Seasoned Leaf drivers are well aware how driving speed and driving conditions affect driving range. Just give us an accurate readout of remaining kilowatt hours and we've got it covered. So in addition to the SOC meter which gives an educated guess of the amount of range left, give us the actual amount of kilowatt hours remaining and we got it covered.
Some folks are asking for a more precise presentation of battery temperature. I'm not too concerned about that because I try not worry about things that I have no control over.