> high accelerations

Acceleration does not waste energy (other than speed related things like wind resistance). This is a myth that is perpetuated without merit, but probably because it's typically associated with overall aggressive driving, which implies bad braking habits.

Max efficiency is typically near peak torque for internal combustion engines [0]. For EV's, electric motors are actually most efficient at higher RPMs [1].

Fuel efficiency can be measured by breaking habits alone.

Edit: sources:

[0] https://i.stack.imgur.com/RE4SM.png

[1] https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-fcf541de83bd871b9ba92d...

true, but I'd bet a 100$ that people accelerating too fast do speed too long and brake too much..

I gun the shit out of my Tesla at a green light, but look far ahead and slowly ease to a stop using regen braking only. Regen braking and one pedal driving is a nice incentive to not waste energy with brakes, and as EV's become more popular, I bet driving habits will become more efficient generally across the board.

Just curious, do you have stats on your watts per mile efficiency you can share? How it compares to the EPA estimates?

244 Wh/mi over 17,000 miles in a Model 3 LR. That's really close to the rated 310 miles for the 75 kw battery. The vast majority of my miles are driving 72 mph on the freeway.

you know I was talking about ICE. Electric motors are a lot simpler so wild change in momentum is probably free and as you say you have regen braking..

Has anyone ever seen calculations of whether leveling out the roads would save significantly in energy? We are slowly getting regenerative technology into cars so we can at least recapture some energy on the way down, but avoiding the use of energy for going up would seem like an even better win. The bonus is the level roads would also benefit older vehicles not equipped to recapture energy.

Most modern roads are far more level than ones made in the past. Though that is because we can easily expend huge amounts of energy in heavy equipment to move said rock and dirt. In general more level roads have a much higher safety factor. Hills and curves tend to increase the accident rate because they require the driver to slow down and re-accelerate more often.

That's annoying and wasteful but hardly the worst part. Murdering children (the rallying cry of Dutch cycle infrastructure was Stop de Kindermoord) and the massive CO2 emissions destroying our climate are the worst part.

Difficult for big vehicles, but changing the landscape and focusing more on personal mobility vehicles and a lot can be done (like the elevated roundabouts for bikes on Netherlands)

this is insane..

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=elevated+roundabouts+for+bikes+on+...

I've read tons of articles about bikes in netherlands and how they design roundabouts. But never this.

It's a bit too much in terms of landscaping impact but it must be sooo lovely to bike..

Try roundabouts. In certain cities, they work really great.

I'm all for them

The worst part about it is accepting the 40,000 deaths a year just because people are selfish and feel they need a car to get anywhere.

Not too complex really. The #1 thing is to encourage flexible working so we can work locally more often - shared office spaces (if required) can be a great resource eg. You get to know people who can provide a great painting service etc.

After that, encouraging building energy efficiency so aircon is not needed so often would be beneficial - well designed buildings that promote airflow without heat exchange for instance. Extra insulation and so on.

Promoting more localised towns and cities, with shared waste/water facilities is good - that datacenter heat can drive aircon or hot water for the town.

Lastly, electric cars as you've said, have many problems - care to see how 2 different companies' cars handle parking in a busy car park? ;)

The best transport option might be smartrail (similar to https://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/?m=1 but steel wheel/LIM and faster).

Smartrail and PRT are designed as a point to point separated-grade network carrying on av. 1 person or a pallette of goods. With a hanging rail you don't need heavy batteries, parking for the vehicles, you can run a pod straight into the factory to pickup goods, and large/rich places can pay to have track straight to their door.

You can prefab the rail and as land usage is just poles in the ground it can be rolled out over fields etc quickly. Track is one-way to eliminate junctions. Pods are on-demand ie. No waiting.

Accessibility improves, you can use the top of the rail to generate (solar) power, run highspeed internet cables in the rail to improve comms across a country, and save on distribution center logistics as you're going point to point.

The last mile may possibly be an issue, but forklift drones and bicycles can take most of the load I feel.

Drivers for this are that it would go fast (200mph+ as light pods so little wear), can go overnight (sleeper pods), you could buy track to your door, personal transport (like a cinema room if you want). The main real issue with cars is that there's a large lobby behind what is a legacy transport solution...

By way of example, UltraPRT has been running flawlessly at Heathrow airport for 10 years, was built on time, on budget, and performs exactly as predicted/modelled.

For more info checkout http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/ in particular Swedetrack

The last thing to mention, and the elephant in the room, is overpopulation. Looking at the stats it seems that birthrates for developed countries is in decline, so the obvious solution is to give everyone a good quality of life.

The issue here is actually at the heart of economics - how do we run an economy with an ageing demographic? Japan is the leader here and they are placing a bet on robotics. What happens though when robots consume 80% of jobs? That may be the issue we need to solve, and as you can effectively tie energy to economic prosperity on a macro scale, a solution presents itself - create more (environmentally friendly) energy sources to raise global wealth.