Adaptive Gear Change Strategy

A method enabling the determination of the optimal gear shift engine speeds for each gear on a vehicle equipped with a multi-gear transmission consisting of

• measuring and recording the vehicle acceleration on a flat ground and over the full range of engine speeds allowed on each gear;
• and
• storing the measured data in non-transitory storage as a graph of acceleration vs. vehicle speed curves;
• and
• determining where the curves intersect;
• and
• from the total gear ratio and rolling radius (or wheel diameters) determine the engine speed corresponding to the lower of the intersecting pairs at the intersection point;
• and
• optionally perform the same operation on various slopes to infer the effect of gravity on the vehicle's acceleration;
• and
• a computing device having access to the data collected above and which, by real-time observations of the physical behavior of the vehicle, in particular the current gear, observed acceleration, and vehicle speed
• determines the optimal gear change speed based on stored acceleration speed vs. vehicle speed as described above;
• and
• adjusts the optimal gear change points dynamically as a function of the currently observed slope onto which the vehicle moves;
• and
• adjusts the optimal gear change point dynamically as a function of any difference between the expected acceleration and the measured acceleration.