Thursday 21 February 2013

Lotus on Fake Gear Shifting For Electric Cars

Which are, of course, smooth, quiet, and torquey, meaning they're fast off the line.

As you may know, electric cars dispense with the gear-shifting process that matches a combustion engine's peaky and narrow torque curve to the increasing road speed of the vehicle.

Once they try an electric car, most drivers fall in love with the seamless delivery of power, uninterrupted by rising and falling engine noises.

But Lotus apparently thinks that driving experience will be so strange, so odd, so foreign--so disturbing--to drivers of regular performance cars that it needs to remedy this alien driving experience.

According to a person close to Lotus Engineering, the company is experimenting with control software on its Lotus Evora 414E plug-in hybrid development car, which began testing last summer.

The new software will mimic the behavior of a multi-speed transmission. That is, under steady acceleration, every so often the system will actually cut power momentarily as if a transmission were shifting, before resuming the previous throttle setting.

Lotus also develops synthesized sounds, so perhaps the slight whine of the electric motor will be masked by the simulated roaring noise of a combustion engine?

what do you think??????????????????????????????

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