Is the rear wiper really an EV thing? I’ve never had a car with one.
No because the brakes didn’t change at all.
But what if you just want to stop at the red light line?
Like is it better to go 30 mph until the last yard then brake, coast from to 30 to 0 with no regen at all, or somewhere in between?
Presumably the regenerative braking isn’t 100% efficient either (some kinetic energy is still lost to heat); I just don’t know how that compares to the energy loss of slowly rolling tires during a coast.
There must be some “point on the curve”, in terms of either distance away from the stopping point and/or the level of regen, that is more efficient than simply coasting to a stop… but that distance must also be great enough to not trigger the friction brakes. I just don’t know how to calculate that optimal point.
I understand that part, about the friction brakes, but what about regen vs coasting?
When I went to demo a Tesla (they make it super easy), the employee asked if I wanted her along for the drive. I said “no”, let me try it out on my own and you can go along for the next one (I demo’d two models). I figured out the one-pedal driving very quickly. It just works and it works well. It is intuitive.
I now go between my car with one-pedal driving and my car with “conventional” driving and it is no issue. I could also hop in a car with three pedal driving and not have issues. Same as I can hop on a two-wheeled vehicle that has a clutch and then transition to one without.
Wow, you must be quite adaptable. I can barely hop between two family combustion cars (that we’ve owned and driven for years) without needing to re-acclimate myself and still almost causing crashes. Renting a car (regardless of fuel type) always freaks me out a little bit because of how different it feels.
That’s my concern as well. I know how hard it is for me to relearn certain driving habits. I learned to drive with a manual transmission, and owned only manuals for the first 30-ish years of driving. We now own two vehicles with CVTs and one manual, but every now and then in the automatics, I still find myself searching for the clutch pedal with my foot, or reaching for the gear mixer with my hand. Pretty harmless, but to me it also shows how deeply ingrained my driving habits are. What if I get the pedal thing wrong, though? Might it have serious - and potentially fatal - outcomes?
Just get a car that doesn’t force this on you. Many EV models allow you to minimize or altogether disable regen braking tied to the accelerator. It’s something you can find out in the first few minutes of a test drive (or even before), not something that lurks in the shadows waiting to surprise you.
As above, your brakes work the same as always.
Your accelerator may or may not, depending on the model (mainly Tesla) and settings. This can be disconcerting at first and potentially annoying to other drivers, but generally, a car that defaults to slowing down more than expected when you ease off the gas is not going to make things more dangerous. The greater danger is still people accidentally accelerating when they actually want the brake, which one pedal driving, by itself, does not improve or worsen
Me too. My wife has a Subaru that I have driven a couple of hundred of miles. I don’t drive it because of having to adjust seats/mirrors (my wife keeps a bunch of stuff behind the drivers seat that all needs to be moved if I drive it). We just don’t drive each others cars.
Few years ago we where in Pittsburgh. Even though my wife grew up there it’s very hard to find your way. There are no North/South/East/West streets. We had some specific places that we had to be, a couple of unfamiliar areas to my wife.
So - We rented an ‘Upper Class’ car, cause it had built in GPS. It was a BMW. I hated that thing. Not an intuitive thing in it. I’m a GIS Application Engineer. I know GPS. Took for ever to get it to work. Stupid POS.
Even with the seatback free and the auto-adjusting seats and mirrors that newer cars have, it still never feels quite right. Something is always just a bit off… the rear view mirror doesn’t move by itself, the radio still connects to the wrong Android phone, the dual-zone climate doesn’t change sides, etc. It leads to bit of an “uncanny valley” effect where it feels almost right but not quiiiiite.
Wow… “It’s even less intuitive than ESRI!” Now that’s an insult 
Been working with ESRI for 33 years. I’ve finally got them figured out. BMW, not so much.
I learned on an auto and then had manual cars for twenty plus years and then back to auto and then EV. Manual was a much more difficult learning curve than EV.
As already said, the mistakes that you typically make at first are using the regular brake unnecessarily. The acceleration is super quick if you hit the accelerator too fast so you very quickly learn. There’s no need to get hysterical though. You aren’t obviously going to turn into Death Race 2000. There are collision avoidance systems. New EV drivers aren’t killing people at higher rates than other cars.
I learned on a 1964 three on the tree chevy van. Guessing that this single pedal thing can’t be worse than that.
My college housemate had a similar era Ford Falcon with three on the tree. I learned on a four speed 1977 Honda Civic with a manual choke.
That’s the case with my '16 Mazda. The GPS system is nearly impossible to use. I looked at newer models and asked the salesman if Mazda was still using that brand. He looked embarrassed and said no. It was/is so bad that I never connected to the service for updates. I just use my phone.
I learned on a 1960 Rambler three-on-the-tree. In the military I drove everything from a four on the floor to a bucket truck with 10 forward gears and two reverse gears (split transmission). Had several manual vehicles, including Jeeps. I really don’t want to have to learn anything new; they can bury my Mazda with me.
Those where the days. My car now sits in a heated garage, and not under 2 feet of snow. These days are better.
Oh god. My GPS in my '19 4Runner would take you in the wrong direction IF it even found the address. And the screen was tiny. Half would be the ‘map’. The other half would be ‘This is your weather right now’. “I KNOW the weather right now, much better than you do. I’m IN the weather right now.”
We moved to a different city. I had/have a tablet to take notes for work and the screen broke (bought a new one for work). I repurposed it as my GPS in my 4Runner. It’s a bit big, but at least it works. Lost a cup holder out of the deal, cause it’s mounted in that.
What is a “three on the tree”? Is that a reference to some sort of logo, or a kind of manual transmission system? (Never learned to drive manual)
As for built-in GPSes… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good one on any brand of car. Isn’t that why Android Auto and Carplay are so popular (and why it’s incredible to me that GM is discontinuing those)? Auto makers are notoriously bad at being able to make good software and UIs.
Three on the tree is a manual transmission with a steering-column-mounted shift lever. Generally distinguished from “Four on the floor.”
If you keep at 30 until the last yard, unless you are going downhill, you are using fuel to maintain 30. So, not economical at all. 30mph times the mass of the vehicle will all be lost heating the brakes.
Or you stop at a gentle pace with no regen, and time it so that the car coasts to a low speed until you need to use the brakes (an EV will use regen even it it’s ‘off’. ‘Off’ simply means it will not use regen to slow the car until you press the brake pedal).
In this case you use no fuel, and the gentle touch on the brakes to bring you to a full stop will return a little energy to the battery.
Obviously, regen is more economical than coasting, but it also means the car will stop more quickly.
If you believe that you’ll need to stop at some way in the distance, allow the car to coast, bringing its speed down to a rate that allows you to gently brake to lose the last mph and get back some energy.