Do they have humans test cars before they produce them or what?
iml.bearblog.dev
iml.bearblog.dev
Having been involved with auto production, I have a bit more insight into how the sausage is made. People do test these things before they're on the road, quite a lot of people in fact. Many of these issues do come up in testing, but for various reasons aren't addressed or the relevant teams that could change them are never even informed. With something like the handle design, the direction is likely coming from product design, who you don't want to fight with as an engineer unless they're asking for something especially stupid.
One of my projects involved a camera and product had unnecessarily chosen to mount it facing upwards towards the sun. This was pointed out when engineers saw the first prototypes and kept being pointed out as an issue throughout implementation. The design got to mass production without changing the angle.
Guess who got the panicked call from product when field testing discovered the camera was unusable at certain times of day? They were informed of root cause, the software knobs we built to mitigate the issue when it arose and I even offered to help them with field testing the fixes. No response.
The Chevy Bolt has it's brake lights come on automatically regardless of what is causing the deceleration, and I believe Hyundai is coming out with an OTA fix for that as well.
When you drive the electric car every day, it's nice using the one-pedal mode... Except it has taught me a large flaw in that my instant braking reaction is to depress the regen paddle, which doesn't work (only 10kW of effort) when the car batteries are well below -20 C, causing me to panic and brake too hard using the traditional hydraulic brakes.
I’d rather see really nice haptic controls, like so:
One-pedal: the pedal has a detent at the neutral point, so a range of forces will hold it at neutral, and a small conscious effort will switch between acceleration and braking. (For good measure, neutral could be zero acceleration instead of zero torque or power.) This would require some kind of variable electrically controlled haptics, and it would need to fail safe.
Two-pedal: a similar detent, but on the brake pedal at the position where mechanical braking starts.
Either one would need serious driver testing, especially to make sure that drivers won’t fail to apply adequate braking in an emergency.
Big exception is Tesla: Tesla's braking pedal uses only the physical brake pads. In a Tesla the only way to regenerate brake energy is by lifting the accelerator.
Source: https://onefiniteplanet.org/wp/one-pedal-driving-and-regen-b...
Why not?
No please no. You are resurfacing my nightmares from working in the autoindustry programming BEVs. Good damn I had to fight against regen braking when releasing the gas.
You want to be able to coast.
Regen braking should be on the brake pedal or a separate lever.
It makes sort of sense from a non-human what’s the motor doing now perspective if this was similar to a gas pedal and removing all gas/juice input. but has no meaningful technical reason to mimic that functionality of the gas pedal rather than the coasting functionality.
In fact, some EVs actually do instead mimic the coasting part rather than the remove all juice part. They mimic the function result rather than not the actual detailed process which doesn’t actually translate well.
The plug in Subaru crosstrek for example configured the thing super well. Let up on the gas pedal, the car coasts with similar slight slowing to a gas car. The brake pedal when starts in regen mode, the tachometer indicates regen. Press harder it transitions to both regen and actual brakes. It’s sensical and just seems so obvious that it should be that way.
My only problem with it is a few manufacturers have done a bad job with the amount of jerk from the transition.
He is also wrong that the brake lights don’t come on, the ones I have driven definitely do.
Also, the gas pedal doesn't have enough resolution to handle forwards, coasting, and decent braking all one one pedal travel. You have to be super careful to go straight to coast on a 1 pedal driving modem. It's much better to just be able to lift of the go pedal.
The user wants it to! That's a really great reason for the machine to obey.
The driver generally has superior information/ estimates about upcoming conditions and decision-trees which the gearbox does not.
For example, "That intersection's red light will probably become green soon, allowing me to efficiently coast for a bit before accelerating again, and I don't (yet) need to brake if instead it stays red."
A similar scenario exists for highways, where the driver is managing their following-distance to buffer-away repeated cycles of braking and acceleration.
Then there's also the problem of cars where the precise increment on the gas pedal isn't accessible or ergonomically viable, and then coasting serves as a way to moderate the output.
No, the user wants to maintain a speed or slow slightly, that does not demand rolling in neutral.
Maybe it is because I have grown up with cars with manual transmissions or maybe it is because I live somewhere with hills and regen is extremely useful, but I don’t find it particularly hard to modulate a vehicle with regen, nor do I think there is an inherent reason for a car to coast other than “it is what I am used to.”
It's different than *some* gas vehicles.
Have a manual transmission? a automatic Mercedes? what about use paddle shifters or manual mode? what about turning off overdrive? of, use the S, 1-3 gears?
In the US, yes, the automatic transmission is most common, but worldwide, less so. Even then, we've failed to educate how to use the settings of the automatic transmission to not overheat brakes on steep grades, varying terrain, or actually control a vehicle.
One thing I hate about driving an automatic transmission car is that it doesn't have a predictable engine braking mechanism.
I don't get why this needs to be in the accelerator pedal. Wouldn't it make more sense in the first stages of the brake pedal? (I haven't driven one of these.)
Ordinarily, you want to be able to let a car coast, and single-pedal driving seems to get in the way of that?
So, I kind of get it -- you have acceleration, and two braking mechanisms, which adds up to three things, and you need to come up with some natural way to expose that to the driver without giving them a billion controls to think about. So is single-pedal more about controlling a speed setpoint than about controlling acceleration? Maybe you just get used to it?
The lack of brake lights does seem like a legit problem though.
In my own car there is a physical rocker to change the temperature but a touch screen to change the fan speed. Guess what I never want to change and what I need to change all the time?
That car allows me to configure special start up messages for my birthday and wedding anniversary but I can’t reprogram what the rockers do.
This means that in total 8 clicks are necessary to turn on and off air circulation. The areas to click are not in the same section of the screen, so in total 4 different locations of the screen must be clicked.
I find that there should be a criminal level of responsibility for making user interface like this in a vehicle.
Of the entire line of Camry vehicles for sale, only the lowest-tier model had no sunroof. So you either got that one, or learned to drive with your head sideways.
I was horribly let down. Have they never driven a ford edge?!
Anyway why does turning on defroster in most cars turn all the fans to full blast immediately. On normal cars I’m mildly annoyed but it’s simple to turn the fan knob with muscle memory.
On the ford edge to turn it off full blast requires pressing a tiny circle on the touch screen to bring up a slider and then push the correct space on the slider, no haptic feedback is possible. it requires staring at the console and ignoring the road.
"Electric cars prove we need to rethink brake lights" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0YW7x9U5TQ
I guess they assume that the human will be spending more than a handful of hours with the car and will be able to read the quick start guide etc. I don't think they optimise for renters.
He didn't like the default regenerative braking on the Kia. Fair enough.
I tried looking through the settings but couldn't for the life of me find the setting to turn this off
The Kia would have paddles on the left and right of the steering wheel for adjusting the regen. Kindof behind all the usual stalks, two little paddles. This would be in the quick start guide that is either the first chapter of the manual or a little book that goes with the manual.
THERE'S NO BRAKE LIGHT THAT COMES ON. Like, what?
On Kias, the brake lights usually do come on during regenerative braking, although it does depend on how much braking is occuring. If the car is only slowing down a little, the lights might not come on.
that doesn't mean someone shouldn't test releases internally before it goes out the door, but it also showed me how users that are forced to use a platform can actually be a detriment if they're not in the cohort you are building for in the first place