This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
i hadn't ever thought about how the headlights having space between themselves on cars really helped judge how far a vehicle was and how fast it is moving toward me.
that is nigh impossible to judge with the teslas with the unibrow lights when moving in the dark.
New VW vehicles also have this. Seems to be the new thing
Mercedes does that too with all their new electric buttplug shaped cars
It's a Good Thing their Boss Elon Musk isn't in Charge of Vehicle Oversight now! That would be REALLY Corrupt!
Makes sense to me, most people who own them seem to drive like jackasses.
My partner and I joke that they're the BMWs of electric vehicles. I once saw a 1-star review on an Electrify America station by a Tesla driver who was freaking out about the station not being compatible with their car and whining about how it should be because Teslas are the most common EVs on the road and how they're never going to patronize Electrify America again. Meanwhile, there's a Tesla charging station just a few blocks away that has at least a dozen available spots whereas the Electrify America stations only have four.
I’ve never heard of electrify America
Our university campus and a couple of hotels have Tesla Chargers set up
They think the self driving feature is always on.
I work as a valet driver and the Tesla - unlike any other car including the newer EVs from other brands - seems like it was designed by people who have never driven a car. Ever.
Call me crazy but having nearly all the controls in a stupid idiotic touch screen where you have to scroll through multiple menus for basic car settings is a terrible idea. And so is braking by letting off the gas.
And the people who buy them tend to be a certain kind of person… not the brightest
I rode a Tesla Uber once and the guy clearly didn't know how to drive it because we were lurching forward and backward while just going down a straight road. We got carsick.
The touch screen is an interface-design antipattern. It causes worse driver distraction than a phone, since experienced users can often interact with simple phone apps without looking. They should be banned, and Tesla (and all carmakers) should be forced to retrofit car controls that are proven safe by third-party testers.
But instead, we have Trump, so next year's Teslas will have automomous chainsaw-bots prowling the car's cabin.
And so is braking by letting off the gas.
First thing I disabled when I was lent a model Y by a friend. Second thing was any kind of self-drive.
I think it’s a huge factor in the increase in traffic deaths. That, inexperienced new / rusty drivers after covid, covid fucking with peoples brains, bigger heavier faster vehicles, increased day to day life stress.
My Nissan Leaf has the one pedal regenerative braking and I prefer it because you are not wearing down your brake pads and rotors. Thankfully, Nissan continues to use buttons and not a bloody touch screen. I agree with you on that point.
Idk I live where there’s snow on the ground six months out of the year and I like the finesse one gets by being able to let off the gas without braking. Braking can trigger a spin or loss of control in slick conditions.
+1 Indeed!!! My Leaf has winter tires, a heavy ass battery in the middle and the constant regen braking pressure keeps the car under control. Accelerating, this thing leaves the ICE powered pick-up trucks and SUVs in my mirrors. It really surprised me.
People always clown on BMW drivers, Tessholes are the absolute worst.
Teslas replaced bmw for sure, now I'm just like "sure they are dicks but at least they can drive" while teslas are mostly dicks who don't know how to drive.
Braking by letting off the gas? So you can’t coast, it’s either go or stop?
Any decent car in the tesla price bracket has configurable regen from all the way off to progressively more regen all thr way up to one pedal driving that will apply the brakes for you to come to a complete stop without touching thr pedal.
Vast majority of these it's switched between the modes using the paddle shift. If you can understand changing gears on a modern ice auto using the paddles, then it's not beyond the average driver to quickly get to grips with using it for regen.
I'd you feather the throttle as you start to slow down you can moderate the amount of regen dynamically without having to change modes. However that requires more skill than the average driver seem capable of.
Cheaper evs tend to have off, on, and may be one pedal driving modes, but they have to cut things to be cheaper as with all cars.
I get between a fifth and a quarter back of my energy consumption from using regen. Learning how to use it is essential for good economy, and it makes you safer as you plan ahead more for where you want to slow down. The least safest way to drive is emergency braking 10m before a stop sign as your default driving style
If you can understand changing gears on a modern ice auto using the paddles, then it’s not beyond the average driver to quickly get to grips with using it for regen.
Teslas have a CVT. No paddles.
And I'd like to know why one-pedal regenerative braking would be any more economical than two-pedal.
Incidentally, hybrid cars have had two-pedal regen braking since 2000 (and before that in Japan-- the Prius came out there in '97).
Tesla have a CVT gearbox? Like actual gearbox that ice cars have? First, I've ever heard of them having a proper gearbox. First production ev I heard of with an actual gearbox is the taycan, that has a two speed, fully auto gearbox. Nit aware of any others with an actual gearbox.
You know how regen works right? And that the brake pedal on modern evs don't engage regen as fully as they are engaging the brakes as that's what that pedal is for. Engage the brakes and you aren't going to get anywhere near the energy back from regen as a ton of energy is being wasted by friction and thus heat of the brake pads.
I've owned a lexis 400h, i like the idea of them, but cvts are garbage to drive, even in hybrids. They also completely unsuitable for evs due to their wide torque band, they work best for ice engines have have narrow torque bands as the entire function of a cvt is to adjust to a narrow rev range to optimise that narrow torque band.
Lot of assumptions in this thread about how terrible one pedal driving must be. No, you can just set the car to coast like normal if you want. There's still a brake pedal of you need to slam the brakes. One pedal driving takes maybe an hour to get used to, but once you learn it you won't want to go back. There's a level of regen that can be adjusted, and you quickly learn how fast that is. I generally have my foot set at a certain level to maintain a speed and if I need to stop at some lights I've gotten very used to when I need to lift my foot up for the regen to stop me at the right spot.
Yeah and I HATE it. I drove my cousins Tesla when it first came out, way before musk started publicly acting like the douchebro he is and before there was really a Tesla fanboy club with a bunch of wannabes slobbing musks knob online.
I think I drove it in the neighborhood for like five minutes, stopped and parked the car and asked my cousin to drive it back. Hating it is an understatement.
Last year all the valets and I agreed we won’t be parking Tesla’s because of how much we hate them, but management overruled us this year.
I’ve been driving for 20 years. I shouldn’t need a lesson from a Tesla owner on how to drive their car. The fact that I do shows how fucking dangerous they are. They’re not designed by people who drive and it’s so fucking obvious that the computer nerds who design them get chauffeured everywhere by Ubers.
Until I lived here I wouldve assumed that last line about Ubers was an exaggeration but...yeah, a huge portion of the bay area strategic techbro reserve actually can't legally drive. Then once they turn 28 and move to the burbs they lost a full decade of learning and they shift from not legally allowed to just "shouldn't".
Yeah I understand why people don’t get their licenses living in cities there’s really no reason. But ability and semi frequency of driving a car should be a prerequisite for being hired to design one.
Hard disagree on this one. The regenerative braking has a learning curve yes, but the pros outweigh the cons imo. When you brake (in a traditional car or an EV), you are wearing out yor brake pads, turning friction into heat. Done right, renerative braking means almost all energy is captured back, and even lower maintenance by not bothering the brake pad.
It takes getting used to, you hate it at first, which is why tesla has an option to disable it, but there is a reason why most people who own Teslas use it, and other EVs are getting it as well.
It's like engine braking in an ICE-powered car in terms of its effect on the car's dynamics.
there is a reason why most people who own Teslas use it
Yeah, it's because they go with the default.
Regenerative braking is good thing, yes .But implementing it as one pedal driving is terrible. Other OEMs like Ford or VW blend regenerative braking into the brake pedal of their EVs such that it feels exactly like a normal car. The friction pads are there for either emergency braking or for bringing the car to a final stop after slowing down.
Toyota's been doing that for over 25 years in its hybrids.
It's an excellent, highly reliable system.
The complaint isn't that regeneration is bad, because that's been part of any battery vehicle since the first Prius in 1997. The complaint is that while Toyota solved this problem before much of Lemmy's userbase was born, only Elon decided to make the car behave fucking weird.
Oh study finds huh, who'da thunk.
