John,
Thank you for the complete explanation. Without context, I tend to assume a neophite posting. Please take my real Model A Ford comments with wry grin.
I would like to suggest another forum of Prius technologist, the Yahoogroup "Prius Technical Stuff" who would be interested in your work. Our membership has done a lot of work expanding the Prius technical envelope and maintains an extensive set of Prius technical papers and reports that now spans three groups. Everything you've posted here would be an excellent introduction:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by johnpoxon
The environment in which I have been running subjective experiments is within an NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) simulator. We captured sounds and vibrations from a Toyota Prius under a number of tests which covered the full spectrum of HEV specific driving conditions.
Once we had captured the appropriate data (sounds, vibrations, component switching), we needed to make sure that the correct HEV control strategy was in place to be able to reproduce exactly what was being heard, felt and used whilst driving the vehicle in the real world. By being able to reproduce the Toyota Prius operations within a virtual world we are able to change the configurations of the standard model, increase/decrease the initial Battery SOC, change the control strategy (e.g. EV only mode lengthening), for example. Then get subjects to drive the vehicle and assess how they perceive the refinement of the vehicle. Once you test a number of different configurations and control strategies it is then possible to find out some of the more objective measures for these by feeding in the actual drive cycles used by the subjects into a performance model to see what the emissions, fuel economy, etc. would have been.
It was felt that not enough subjective assessment of customers was being considered early on before in the design loop in conjunction with the more objective side. Once we understand what customers like to feel and hear, it is then easier to see whether a particular vehicle design is feasible in terms of costs, manufacturing, performance, etc. Whereas before, the first real input a customer can have is when they see the vehicle for the first time in a showroom, when it is too late to have any real significant input into the vehicle they want, apart from air conditioning yes/no or car colour for example.
So trying to find out some of your views may help with the kind of important questions I’d need to ask, and what kind of experiments are worthwhile involving potential customers in.
|
One of the reasons why "Prius Technical Stuff" is important is our members actively engage in performance enhancements. One member whose handle is "Hobbit" recently published "Warp Stealth" on how to get optimum fuel efficiency at speeds above 41 miles per hour. He did this using discrete electronics instrumentation versus the OBD scanning approach others have used. In short, you'll find a community of technologists who use empirical means to expand the envelope.
I'm new to the group and have my own
Prius projects but they do not involve handling, yet. My first year's experiments have dealt with getting emergency power, 120 VAC power from the Prius, transaxle oil testing, some MG1/MG2 instrumentation and on-going ICE and transaxle block heater experiments. The 'low hanging fruit'.
Bob Wilson
ps. My dad thought that having us maintain and drive a 1929 Model A Ford would teach us a lot about auto mechanics. We learned . . . DON'T EVER GET A MODEL A FORD!