No argument at all, just a clarification.

200 watt hours = 2000 watts for 0.1 hour or 6000 watts for 2 minutes.

At 30 MPH the car will draw 6000 watts and you will go 1 mile in 2 minutes.
(Sorry to get off topic, I felt this was an important overlooked detail.)
-John

P.S.
EOppie Wrote:
"I was trying to avoid this becomming a discussion about the fuel economy one would save...I wasn't trying to do this in the first place."

I know! Nice side effect though, don't you think!?

 

I think the math goes the other way.

200 watt hours would mean one would use 200 watts of power over a period of one hour.

If one managed to drive their FEH for one hour in EV mode, IMHO, they would use up a lot more than 200 watt hours of energy.

200 watt hours is 3.3 watt minutes. If you draw 3.3 watt minutes continuously, for 60 minutes, you get 200 watt hours.

At 30 MPH, it would take two minutes to complete one mile. Two minutes at 3.3 watts minutes would be 6.6 watts, not 6,000 watts.

Again, that seems way too small to me. I don't think one can get "about 3 extra hours of "free" EV time per year" by using LED taillights.

 

The math doesn't go the other way. 200 Watt-hours=12000watt-minutes.
At 30mph in EV, you will be drawing ~15amps from 330V for ~5kW for 2 minutes, which is ~165watt-hours.

 

Walt, what this illustrates is, it takes VERY LITTLE power to keep a vehicle moving, once it is moving. Yes, this is astounding news to most folks.

I have an early 2005, one of the first 5,000 ever built, and I have very accurately measured the 200 watt-hours per mile. ( really 6000 watts for 2 minutes ) This is superior to Toyota Prius. However, with slight refinements each year, both cars get better and better.

As Carl ( Desert Dog ) points out, his is closer to 165 watt-hours per mile.
Mine is older, and is closer to 200 watt hours per mile.

It is 100% true that you only need 8 to 15 horsepower to drive your vehicle over level ground, once the acceleration phase is over. 1 horsepower = 748 watts if I remember correctly.

Now don't get too excited, because this battery pack has a very narrow band of usable charge, that gives it an estimated 15 year lifespan, but every 2 miles, you need to recharge it, if you drain it to the maximum allowed which is not the same as the maximum possible if unregulated.
-John

Also check out:
https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...ad.php?t=14635

 

Has anyone swapped out their tail light bulbs for some LED ones in the 2008s? I was thinking about doing this and wanted to see if there would be any error messages, or issues since the same bulb works for the tail, brake and rear turn signal. It appears, from John's posts, that there will not be any error messages, but if I have to add a flasher unit or change any of the electronics I'd rather not do it, at least while the thing is still under warranty. Geeky I know, but it seemed like a cool idea after seeing the improvement using the LED replacements for the map/interior lights.

 

Have not done this, but will be installing a towing light kit in the rear, meaning the FEH will be towed behind the motorhome. In previous vehicles, you typically tied into the original turn/tail light circuitry with isolation diodes. For the FEH, that was NOT recommended, and the kit actually includes new bulbs to be added to the housing in the rear. Totally separate circuits.

This drastic change from simply tapping into the OEM circuitry tells me the car electronics monitoring is pretty sensitivity to current draw in the bulbs as others have pointed out.

 

In about the early 90's Ford started using a solid state turn signal flasher relay. Those use a current sensing resistor (nichrome wire link) to control the flash rate and thereby indicate a turn signal "bulb out" via fast flashing.

The resistor is designed to drop about 100 millivolts if both turn signal bulbs are "alive" and each drawing their "assigned" 18 watts, 1.5 amps (yours may differ) when powered. At about 70-80 milliamps the new solid state relay is designed into go to fast flashing mode to let you know of bulb failure just as did the old mechanical relays.

The LED turn signal bulbs I used required only about 225 milliamps each so I replaced the solid state turn signal current sensing resistor according to the ratio of the change in current load/draw.

Worked on my 93 Ranger PU, 2001 Mustang, '01 AWD RX300, and '01 911.