Well, sometimes it’s the fault of the jerk who cut me off. 
Those jerks are affecting my Tesla Safety ScoreBeta, too!
I have a fusion hybrid. The indicator which shows that the battery is charging does start lighting up when coasting, but the amount of deceleration is negligible, it coasts almost as well as a normal car. It seems like whatever it’s regenerating must be very low energy for that to be the case. On the other hand, I often end up with a full charge of the battery after a prolonged period of driving without braking at all, so it must be recharging to some significant degree without deliberately slowing down with braking.
To get the most out of regeneration while slowing down, you use brake pressure (minimal depression of brake pedal). The electric motors can handle a certain degree of braking on their own without involving the friction pads. This both maximizes your energy recovery and minimizes wear on your brake systems. If you need to brake faster than the electric motors (really, generators in this mode) allow then the friction brakes will kick in. It’s actually really smooth, I can’t tell the difference between when I’m just generator braking and when I’m generator+pads braking. When you finally stop, it gives you an indicator of how well you braked, giving you a percentage of energy recovered during the brake. What I assume is happening here is if you use the generator braking without involving the pads, you get 100% recovery, and any pad use leads to progressively lower recovery.
I like it - I can coast like I normally would in normal driving situations and one-pedal driving sounds like it would annoy me, although maybe I’d just get used to it.
Or they set it as close as possible and just leave it there when conditions warrant to stay back a bit. It becomes up to me how fast they go while they check their phone. I think this is why tailgating is getting worse and worse. Sucks.
“Dude, you are on a two lane mountain highway. You don’t want to pass, back off a bit will ya? You do not know what is around the next bend, and I don’t either.”
I tend to slow down. Not a brake test, but just gradually dropping my speed until, hopefully, they go past.
My understanding with the Camry was - if you press on the brake, you are doing regen. Press really hard (“I really nee to stop!”) and the brake pads engage also. I read a report once that complained about the feel of the two-stage braking, but it did not bother me.
OTOH, the tesla Cruise Control will brake really hard, but as I understand it, it is all regen unless it’s an emergency.
She never drove a stick shift apparently.
that would be better than no coasting at all. I suspect I coast more than the average driver. Not sure. I would definitely not like the car to brake when I take my foot off the pedal. I could get use to gradually backing the pedal off if I want to coast.
Also something to consider, brakes are meant to be used. By that I mean if you’re not using them it’s like a car that sits for long periods of time. Brakes are one of the things that take a hit if they’re not used. It may not be noticeable until you really need to stop. I would suggest to EV owners that they hit their brakes hard once a week to keep them in good running order.
I go the speed limit, but will pull over when there is a safe place to do so and let them go by. I do NOT like tailgaters. There are way too many broken down cars or animals that may pop out on the road.
A shady spot on an other wise perfectly dry road on a sunny day may be glare black ice. I’ve seen way too many cars balled up like a Swanson frozen dinner in the ditch.
Coasting is an ICE thing. It’s meaningless for an EV. Maintaining speed, accelerating gradually, slowing gradually, slowing quickly, etc. are all just degrees of the same thing. If you need to brake hard, hit the brakes–otherwise it’s just how you apply the accelerator.
I compare driving a Tesla to driving a manual in first gear with the snap forwards or back with any abrupt change in pressure on the accelerator. It can be uncomfortable with somebody who is not used to a Tesla’s dynamics doing the driving.
I totally get @Sage_Rat’s wife hating the feeling.
No, coasting is not an ICE thing. It’s a driver preference thing. I like to coast. If I were driving a stick shift I’d pull it out of gear when coasting. Automatics tend to pull the locking converter out for coasting. Some automatics will downshift if going down a steep hill and brakes are applied.
Braking, regardless of ICE or EV, should be based on touching the brakes and not assumed by a computer.
I think accelerating and coasting when you could’ve otherwise maintained power is less efficient and has more wear on the engine. Coasting is still good in a lot of circumstances like if you know you’re going to have to stop further down the road. I agree Tesla’s method would take some getting used to and would be weird, but maybe it grows on you.
First time I drove a Tesla (we rented a model S one day on vacation) my wife complained of a headache. We figured it was because I was not used to the regen/no coast, so my driving was switching between accelerate and then slow down and it kept tapping her head back against the headrest.
The Model 3 regen deceleration is not full braking. It’s more like letting off the gas on a manual transmission car so the engine slows the car - noticeable but not like I’m braking for a traffic light from a high speed. (And instead of burning more gas to slow the car, you’re recapturing the energy) Now that I’m used to it, when I drive the BMW I find it annoying that I coast and I have to actively apply the brake to slow down. I keep thinking “replacement brake pads from the BMW dealership are going to cost over $2000 installed.”
That’s what you do in an ICE. Coasting is good if you know you have to wait at a stoplight. But EVs offer a different option: regen early to decrease your speed, then travel at a low, constant speed to the intersection. If you know more or less when you’ll get the green, you can time it so that you don’t have to stop at all. You got the benefit from the regen and because you didn’t come to a stop, you don’t have to burn so much energy getting back up to speed (plus you beat all those other cars off the line).
Sometimes you can pull this off in an ICE, but not as frequently, because coasting doesn’t bleed off your speed fast enough. You burn through your distance and have to make it up by going slower than you should at the end. As long as you can recapture the energy via regen, you’re better off slowing down early and then maintaining a constant speed.
EVs are mechanically different from ICE vehicles. There’s no such thing as neutral or a torque converter or even a notion of the motor being fully “off”.
I doubt any EV on the market ever coasts in the sense that the motor is truly freewheeling. Since they have such an efficient drivetrain and usually have excellent aerodynamics and low tire resistance as well, they would feel way too coasty for anyone’s preference. More so even than shifting a manual into neutral. Automatic drivers would hate it. Even vehicles with a regen off setting are probably engaging a small amount of regen to match the feel of their other cars.
That’s not what’s happening at all though. The computer isn’t deciding braking, it’s still me as the driver. Both my Bolt and my Tesla allow for one-pedal driving and it’s a revelatory experience. I adapted to it in the first minutes of my test drive, as did my wife. It’s a totally natural experience to drive with just the one input. Press down to speed up, lift up to slow down.
Getting into a traditional car (of which I still have one, plus my motorcycle) feels weird. The thought process becomes, “Why do I have one control for speeding up and yet a different one for slowing down?”
Exactly to “coast” you just almost ease off on the pedal. It’s very much like an ICE car, where you depress the pedal a certain amount to maintain a constant speed. the difference is when you completely ease up on the pedal, it slows about the same as a manual transmission car.
Generally, I can time it so I do not have to use the brake at all coming to a light or stop sign. Sometimes, I have to stop the last few mph with brake, or goose it to get the last 30 feet to the stop.
BTW - there is no transmission. the engine’s power curve is very flat, it has pretty damn good pickup from 0 to top speed, so no need to “gear down” for power. As a result, I keep pointing out, there is so much less maintenance - consider how complex and prone to fail an automatic transmission is, and it’s simply there because torque at low RPM sucks for a gas engine. Now consider all the other Rube Goldberg pieces on a modern car - the oil and water pump, filters, oil leaks, timing and valves, ignition, starter, pistons and crankshafts, multiple gaskets and seals, muffler and catalytic converter - and that lump of metal get to the temperature of burning gasoline then cools down over and over again. An EV is - just an electric motor and fixed gear ratio to wheels. Everything else in electric, so non-moving parts. The parts in common - steering and suspension, tires, etc - are the somewhat lower maintenance parts of the vehicle.
(There is a coolant system for the batteries. However, they never heat up anywhere close to what an ICE engine does. Indeed, you can see videos on YouTube of driving the Autobahn at 240kph - after half an hour, the car automatically slows down to 90kph until the batteries cool off. Then off it goes again…)
How is it meaningless? Apply power to the motor and it spins. Put a load across the contacts and it resists spinning (ie brakes). Shut off the power to it and it’ll spin freely, aka coasting.
But not everyone likes to drive like that. Personally, I don’t like creeping up to a red light over the course of 50 feet (and I hate it even more when I’m behind someone doing it). For me, personally, I’d rather just get to the red light and stop and get a few seconds of not having to be hyper aware of my surroundings. Once everyone is stopped the risk of getting into an accident is significantly lower, even when compared to moving very slowly.
Well, no I’m curious. Next time I’m on the road (should be soon) and I remember, I’ll drop my car into neutral and see if it coasts for longer than I’d expect an ICE car to coast for with my foot off the gas. I can also compare it to having the automatic regen brakes set as low as possible (it’ll be interesting to see if they can be turned fully off, which I think they can).
That’s not what you do in an EV, though. Let off the accelerator pedal when it’s time for an ICE car to start gently braking. The car will slow down due to regen. Modulate the accelerator pedal so that the slowing down brings the car to a stop at the desired point.
The other option is to approach the light at full speed, and then press the brake as late as necessary. That’s just as inefficient in an EV as an ICE car, but there’s nothing stopping anybody from driving that way in an EV.
If the desire is to coast up to the light, so slightly reducing speed from a long way off, and then braking near the end, that is also pretty easy to accomplish in an EV. It just requires mostly letting off the throttle, not completely letting off.
Modulating the pedal to barely slow down is a skill like (but easier) than driving a manual. At first it requires thinking about it, but after some practice, it becomes second nature.