I was driving up the M1 in my van and the speed limit had been dropped to sixty to “protect the environment”, it did go through my mind that the driver of the Tesla I was following was have been a bit annoyed.
Yes but ...
There is an optimum efficiency for petrol engined vehicles, which may or may not be at 60 mph, but probably isn't far off.
Given that wind resistance is proportional to the third power of speed, a reduction of speed is likely to result in greater economy.
I like to go as fast as I can, subject to my vehicle's maximum speed and the legal limit, but there reaches a point where greater speed and, therefore, fuel consumption (liquid or electrical) leads to a need to refuel, which negates the benefits of a higher speed.
So if the Tesla had been able to go faster, there would still have been the question of time spent refuelling, and if as mentioned at the beginning, that was a real bottleneck, it would have been counter-productive.
I was driving up the M1 in my van and the speed limit had been dropped to sixty to “protect the environment”, it did go through my mind that the driver of the Tesla I was following was have been a bit annoyed.
Yes but ...
There is an optimum efficiency for petrol engined vehicles, which may or may not be at 60 mph, but probably isn't far off.
Given that wind resistance is proportional to the third power of speed, a reduction of speed is likely to result in greater economy.
I like to go as fast as I can, subject to my vehicle's maximum speed and the legal limit, but there reaches a point where greater speed and, therefore, fuel consumption (liquid or electrical) leads to a need to refuel, which negates the benefits of a higher speed.
So if the Tesla had been able to go faster, there would still have been the question of time spent refuelling, and if as mentioned at the beginning, that was a real bottleneck, it would have been counter-productive.
