Eiffel Over

Tag: batteries

  • Potential energy navigation – or not pedalling downhill

    Potential energy navigation – or not pedalling downhill

    How driving an e-car has changed the way I think about driving, cycling and our relationship to the landscape through which we travel.

    I have recently started driving an electric vehicle from a car club. I have always understood one of the benefits of electric vehicles being that when you slow down you can convert some of your kinetic energy back into potential energy. In practice you can see this happening when you drive. Motoring along a flat or uphill road, the dashboard display shows a steady flow of current from the battery to the motor. And when you crest a hill and take your foot off the accelerator, the display shows the current flowing the other way. 

    But this engine-braking effect only gives you a slow rate of deceleration. If you need to slow down more quickly then you need to use the old-fashioned breaks, converting that kinetic energy to heat – which is lost. 

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  • What if the screen you are now using is your last?

    What if the screen you are now using is your last?

    One day I hope this article will be printed in a book. But until then I can be fairly sure that you will be reading it on a screen. In 2021, that is most likely to be a phone, a tablet or a desktop, or possibly some sort of wearable device. In the future, that list could include countless other devices: a web table, a car dashboard, smart glasses, digital wall paper – even a hologram? Such is the speed of technological development that it is only natural to assume that whatever device we have now it will be renewed and upgraded to the next thing at some point. But what if that weren’t true?

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