Electric vehicle

An electric vehicle that includes an electric motor as a power device for traveling, and that does not include:

• (i) an internal combustion engine, (ii) a transmission connected to the internal combustion engine, and (iii) a clutch mechanism connected to the internal combustion engine, the electric vehicle comprising:
• a controller configured to control a driving torque output from the electric motor;
• an accelerator configured to be operated by a driver of the electric vehicle and to provide instructions to the controller according to an operation amount of the accelerator;
• a pseudo-shifter configured to be operated by the driver of the vehicle to select an arbitrary virtual gear stage mode among a plurality of virtual gear stage modes in which torque characteristics of the electric motor differ in stages with respect to a rotational speed of the electric motor;
• and
• a pseudo-clutch configured to be operated by the driver of the vehicle when the pseudo-shifter is operated and configured to simulate an operation of the clutch mechanism, wherein
• the controller is configured to:
• determine a basic torque, which is the driving torque to be output from the electric motor when the pseudo-clutch is not operated, the controller determining the basic torque from (a) the operation amount of the accelerator and (b) a virtual engine speed, which is a rotation speed of a virtual engine when a torque transmitted from the electric motor to a wheel of the electric vehicle is assumed to be the torque transmitted from the virtual engine to the wheel via a virtual clutch mechanism and a virtual transmission, based on the virtual gear stage mode selected by the pseudo-shifter and the operation amount of the pseudo-clutch, the virtual engine speed being calculated according an equation “Ne=Np×(1/r)×slip,” where “Ne” is the virtual engine speed, “NP” is a shaft rotational speed of a propeller shaft connected to the electric motor, “r” is a gear ratio corresponding to the virtual gear stage mode selected by the pseudo-shifter, and “slip” is a slip ratio of the virtual clutch mechanism calculated from the operation amount of the pseudo-clutch, and
• multiply the basic torque by a predetermined coefficient that changes in response to the operation amount of the clutch to determine the driving torque to be output from the electric motor.