Car Tech Spotlight: Low gear recharging in the 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV

In an electric vehicle, range is everything. As with a gas-powered vehicle, once you’re out of juice, you’re stuck.

Of course, with a gasoline-powered vehicle you can get enough juice in a can to get you to a fueling station. But while AAA has special trucks that can charge an EV back to a few miles of life, most likely you'll need to be towed to a charging station or back home.

That’s why EV makers come up with various ways to capture otherwise wasted energy, such as through regenerative braking, and feed it back to the battery. The 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV has a neat way of doing this via its 1-speed transmission that has just two settings: Drive and Low.

During a recent drive, we got to see just how much regenerated energy the Low setting provides to the car's battery.

The Low setting doesn’t provide lower gearing, as with the transmission of a traditional gas-powered car. Instead it allows for more regenerative engine braking when lifting off the accelerator, like the “B” mode on a Toyota Prius.

• 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV rated at 119 mpg

You can see in the video below the effect that driving in Low has on providing power back to the battery and extending the range of the Spark EV. At the beginning of the roughly 1-minute video, the maximum estimated battery range is at 40 miles. But after shifting from Drive into Low and coasting downhill for a short while, this range reaches 50 miles.

This is visible on the left side of the instrument panel display, in what Chevy calls the “confidence gauge.” It shows the best-case range above and the worst-case below, and is designed to take some of the anxiety out of knowing just how far you can go without running out of juice.

It may also give you confidence that you have enough range remaining to, say, drive a bit faster or turn on the air conditioning. On the right side of the instrument panel, a display shows the amount of electrical energy feeding back to the battery.

Seeing this may inspire you to drive more in Low mode, even though the increased engine braking effect makes the car feel a bit more jerky when slowing down. Passengers may notice this more than the driver. But if they complain, just tell them you want to make sure you can get where you're going. Or that you’re compensating for their extra weight.

 

Source: MSN