Colour choice affecting range?

[Rolfe]

Which one, the choice of words or the rare colour?

T1 Terry

I was going to change "less" to "fewer" in @Roldorf's post #19, but then that would have spoiled @siteguru's response.

Fortunately Roldorf gave me another chance in post #31.

 

[Everest]

In a study I read a long time ago, yellow cars won.

and the main reason why the GPO changed their telecoms van (pre-BT) from dark green to yellow

 

[Slashergash]

As I do I was pondering this overnight.
Making quite a few assumptions, my thoughts went thusly.
power used to cruise on a flat road with no head wind, around 10kW.
power used to run A/C about a tenth of that.
difference in heat between black and white about a tenth of that again,
so a 1% difference in range.

But later on I realised, there's not just radiation to think about, there's also conduction.
Which means the faster you go the more the radiation induced heat is cooled.
So if you go fast enough the car's skin is close to ambient with any colour you choose.

Who started this complicated problem??

 

[QLeo]

I remember back when @QLeo got Goth Leo, he said he had the choice of black or white (because that was what his dealer had in stock). He chose black on the grounds that it's generally cold in Scotland so it might keep a bit warmer. Whether the effect is more than negligible I have no idea.

Well, we had to come up with some logical reason for the choice one way or another, and that was the only answer I could fish for.

I really don't know, but I do think that we have to use the heater less in shoulder times,, eg if it's cold out but the sun is shining. I'd be less concerned about having to use the aircon, but the tenuous thinking was that heater use might be significant.

By the way, and off-topic, we were stuck on the A9 for over an hour in February, the cops not letting us pass a lorry that had shed some diesel. The battery clicked down 1% in that time, (so less than 1% use) and we were toasty and warm, while the ICE cars around us sounded like musical chairs as they started up to warm their occupants then switched off again so as not to gas them. Made us feel fairly smug.

 

[Rolfe]

That chimes with my experience when camping in the car. Approximately 1% per hour. More if it's really cold, or if I've been running other stuff off the VtL. As I said, the aircon took more than the heater.