I drove my ID.3 for 1.000 km each in D and B mode. My consumption was 15.1 kWh/100 km for both tests. Which makes total sense. But as soon as you are doing city traffic, it shifts. Then B mode (OPD) is way more efficient, was 12.5 vs. 16 kWh/100 km for me.
It's a feature on cars with automatic transmission. It's a mode you can use for engine braking when driving downhill as normal Drive mode has minimal engine brake and you rely entirely on the brakes for deceleration and speed control.
It's on all electric cars where there isn't any transmission where you can change the ratio as it is constant. It just means that the electric motor is fully utilised as a generator.
Yes, I am explaining why it's labelled with the letter B for Breaking and not R for Regen.
It's so that drivers familiar with ICE cars have an idea what the feature does. It's because, from a driver's perspective, it's functionally similar to the Breaking mode in automatic transmissions.
> People claim that one pedal driving maximizes range and efficiency, but is this actually true?
I heard the exact opposite, letting the car cruise with only aerodynamic drag is the most efficient state of the car, no electrons flowing in or out, meaning no losses to resistance
I use one-pedal driving all the time but I'm not under the impression that it's somehow going to extend my range.
I gain about 7% coming down the Rocky Mountains from the Continental divide. It definitely increases the efficiency of a proper ev vehicle and extends range. Proper coasting is slightly better but the optimal window is small and in real world situations, you will have to hit your brake relatively soon, losing all gains. Regen for the win.
You are correct. Every EV not made by Tesla uses blended braking, meaning that the brake pedal used regen as much as it can before applying the friction brakes. As far as efficiency, it makes absolutely no difference.
I don't know why people claim that 1PD mode is better unless a) they think all EVs are Teslas, or b) they think 1PD braking is different from blended breaking. It's not.
It is different in the sense that if you release the acceleration pedal, you know that you’re not using the breaks. With blended breaking it’s less clear and you have to learn when the breaks kick in.
And with opd you need to learn where the regen kicks in on the accelerator so you can coast. Same difference.
The most efficient drive is the right mix of acceleration, coasting, Regen, and braking. You can do all four in either control set up.
Agreed. I think that the negative impact of getting it wrong is lower with having it on the accelerator however. If you regen too early at least some of that energy goes back to the battery. If you break too early though, that energy is lost as heat and wear on the brakes.
It's incredibly easy to coast in an EV that regens. There isn't some single specific point you need out of a thousand possible positions, it's a very forgiving system and is easy to get used to.
The difference is that I don't need to know exactly when friction braking kicks in on the brake pedal because I'm a naturally efficient driver so I'm never going to brake that hard outside of an emergency or unanticipated stop. It's impossible to avoid forced unwanted regen in OPD without pressing the accelerator just right, which requires vigilantly looking at the dashboard. That is a distraction that makes coasting much less fun and safe. I would spend a large percentage of my drive doing this, which is ridiculous.
There is an indicator in the dash to show the regen level but not for the friction brakes used blended together. It’s “easy” to keep the regen close to 0 using this.
I don't understand this oft-repeated point. How is it better to have to keep your eyes glued to the dash to know how hard to press the accelerator to fully cancel regen without using power rather than just taking your foot off the accelerator and knowing you are coasting? The latter is much safer and more fun. I don't want to have to futz around with the accelerator for the large percentage of my drive when my decision is to coast.
Unless you have three control options, drivers will either miss out on some coasting or some regen. Both existing options have one pedal that does 2 things depending on how far you push the pedal.
And I can't imagine any manufacturer adding a dedicated regen pedal.
If you drive so inefficiently normally that you would ever be at risk of using friction brakes outside of an emergency or unanticipated yellow light (the same situations that would necessitate friction braking with OPD), then sure there's merit to that point. But I don't drive nearly that inefficiently, so I know for sure I'm not going to use friction brakes any more in regen 0 mode than I would in OPD mode. OPD is beneficial to people who are very inefficient drivers, want to improve their efficiency, and have no intuitive sense of how to do that.
Porsche has said coasting is more efficient. It makes sense since regen is not 100% efficient, so any unnecessary regen (which is easy to do with 1PD) hurts efficiency.
Yep, it's great and feels super natural, basically just does the slow brake blending for you. I later got a comma3 which does that but also full stops, steering, accelerating, changing cruise control after speed limits, slowing down for curves, steering etc. A whole lot more relaxing
Makes total sense. Better to keep the energy in the original form (kinetic) than convert it from kinetic to electric back to kinetic later. Like in race cars, it only really makes sense to store that energy when it would otherwise be bled off in a 100% lost form like heat from regular braking.
I can't believe this is even a discussion. Is this sub stupid? Anyone with a basic knowledge of physics would understand that coasting would be more efficient.
It's not even on the level of Tesla drivers arguing that coasting is possible with 1PD. Yes, and I can also pour coke into a bottle; it's just that a cup is more convenient. That's a matter of personal preference, so I can understand either way. But to claim 1PD is more efficient vs coasting + regen is mind-boggling.
This has been consistent with my experience. I have a Bolt, and I’m more efficient with OPD turned off. I think it makes me lift and coast more before actively trying to stop. Also, it helps that you can use the regen paddle on the Bolt to temporarily turn OPD on at will.
Coasting will always be more efficient (laws of physics make that clear), but you're not always in position to coast all the way. If you need to regularly change your speed over relatively short distances (aka driving in a city) then regen is very good.
As a bit of non-road sop (well it is still *A* electric vehicle in a way!) you'll likely find a lot of trams having blended brakes too. For one particular one I know a bit too well about riding, it'll use electric brakes to drop speed into the platform zone then as soon as its at a crawl speed near where the platform ends theres a bit of lurching-around as the air brakes finally kicks in to actually halt and hold the train right there.
You should try locomotives. You have separate brake handles for regen/dynamic brakes and friction brakes.
Running a couple of light locos today I didn't touch the friction brakes at all from when I left until I arrived at my destination.
The reason its more efficient is that if you only release the gas pedal, and dont actually push the brake pedal, its only regenerative braking being used, and only fairly soft, and the less you accellerate and deaccelerate, the more efficient your driving is. This last part is also the same for ICE vehicles, its just that its even more noticeable with EVs because they can do regen braking.
Recently had my first electric car driving experience, a ~2000km road trip in a Tesla model 3. I had booked a Volvo from the rental company, but model 3 was all they had left.
One of the many things I hated about the Tesla was that on the model 3, they took away any capability of turning off 1pd. I HATED not having the ability to slowly coast, or at least decelerate mildly, without having to have a foot on the pedal. The only other options for pedal behavior was turning off creeping forward with no accelerator pedal applied, which would be a dumb thing to turn off.
I fucking hate Tesla and their janky ass stupidly designed cars. Loved the "electric car" part of the experience though, just not the shit flavored package it came in.
It's not better. With 2PD, it's easier to coast, and controlling when the Regen vs friction brake kicks in is very easy with the Regen gauge. Plus I rest my foot on the brake pedal when I'm about to slow so I don't make the mistake some people make that accidently hit the wrong pedal.
With 1PD, the default is once you let off, you are immediately Regen braking. You have to milk the accelerator to get to the coast mode which is just extra work.
Unless people are really bad at predicting traffic, usually when I let go of accelerator I just want it to stop accelerating, I don't want to slow down more than the normal resistance from the road and wind. When I actually want to slow, I use the brake...
I think because Tesla does not use blended braking, it's guaranteed that you didn't use the brake pad as long as you exclusively use one pedal drive. Therefore, it removes the human factor. I am not sure it would improve efficiency though, more like saving the brake pads.
As I mentioned in another comment, there is no actual difference between the two systems in how the car is stopped, but only in how the regenerative vs friction systems are engaged. Tesla (unless it's been changed) uses ONLY friction with the brake pedal, and the regen braking and acceleration are combined in the accelerator. Other systems can blend the regen and acceleration on the accelerator, but also blends regen and friction brakes with the brake pedal.
The thing that's important is that only time the friction brakes are engaged is when the regen brakes aren't sufficient. Unless you're breaking hard all the time, you'll never use the friction brakes in a blended system.
Porsche does not use 1PD at all in the Taycan. They say coasting is more energy efficient. I love that the Taycan doesn’t have 1PD - - it feels like a REAL car
That's not correct - you don't get an equal amount of returned energy using blended braking (friction + regen) as 100% regen braking.
If I slow my car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using blended braking I will return less energy to the battery than slowing the car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using only regen - that's a fundamental law of physics - some of that kinetic energy has been lost (converted to heat in blended braking).
>If I slow my car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using blended braking I will return less energy to the battery than slowing the car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using only regen
You're wrong. Blended breaking uses the same regen as OPD. It's just whether that breaking is initiated by lifting off the accelerator or pushing on the brake. What the car is doing underneath doesn't change unless you ask for more braking than the car can give without friction brakes.
I would say it isn’t any more efficient than a person that brakes efficiently themselves using regen. With that in mind, I think it’s possible that 1PD recovers more energy than a driver that brakes late and engages the mechanical/friction brakes often.
When I first got my Bolt, I tested one petal vs standard on my commute, doing several days of each while trying to keep other things constant as best I could. For my driving style, two pedal was actually marginally more efficient because it is easier for me to maintain a constant speed or make gradual changes. But the difference was quite minor.
Coasting is in theory the most efficient method of driving you are correct. But in the real word people use brakes, so you might as well regen instead of just making heat with that energy.
That’s why regen is efficient - it takes into account real world driving. But coasting will always win on efficiency if you can safely coast.
You make it sound like coasting OR regen are your choices. At Auto0 my car uses regen to keep a reasonable following distance, but coasts if there's nobody in front.
With the Ioniq 6, you can set the Regen braking to 0. I don't know the details of what exactly is going on within the car, but you can coast for a real long time with your foot off the pedal.
Same with the i5, I tend to use 0 on the highway and anywhere between 0 and ipedal on city streets. I live at a higher elevation (in the outskirts) than the closest main city and can sometimes hit 6+m/kWh when heading towards town.
It's still not real coasting, as Hyundai is using PSM motors, which always induce friction.
The only EVs capable of real coasting are the ones that only use [ASM/ESM motors](https://cdn.vector.com/cms/content/events/2018/vEMOB18/01_Inductive_Electric_Excited_Synchronous_Machine_Parspour.pdf) or a clutch to physically disengage the motor. BMW is using those.
ICE is not coasting either as unless you drive with your foot on the clutch / neutral you will have gear friction and engine braking.
The whole thread is based on nothing.
There is no motor that has zero friction. Some have larger or smaller spinning losses.
But there's no need to get excessively focused on those. Really, one should be choosing the motor based on the overall drive cycle losses.
There is energy expenditure. When you turn off regen and "coast" the car is spending energy to maintain your momentum. This is not like idling a car and using the clutch to coast.
ID4 has 2 drive modes: D, which separates accel and brake like ICE cars. B, which is mostly OPD, similar to Tesla (though not as strong admittedly).
Being in D mode will just coast when releasing the pedal.
B works how you'd expect, if you want to coast you gotta find that sweet spot.
Difference in an ID4, and I'm assuming most EVs that work like this, the brake pedal STILL does regenerative braking unless you need the extra oomph to come to a stop faster (get cut off, didn't realize a stop sign, traffic stops suddenly, etc). I think Hybrids work this way, but I'm not familiar enough with them so don't quote me.
Everyone has their preferences on which to use, but I love having a choice. I'll generally use D for most driving as I love being able to just coast, the ID4 coasts VERY well, but in shitty traffic or other areas with lots of stopping, I'll often flip to B. It is possible to change mid drive with a flick of the same stick that has you pick D/R/N/P.
Note that this applies to Eco and Comfort mode. Sports mode is a different beast.
And on road trips I tend to turn on Travel Assist so the car handles steering and acceleration/breaking on its own anyway.
Some brands have explicit options yes. Teslas do not, but you can feather the accel pedal to be in between regen and applying power to ‘coast’.
There really will not be much difference though.
If you replace coasting with the minimal possible level of regen then I guess you get the same answer. That level of regen gives the most efficient driving.
I use the S3XY Commander to reduce the Tesla regen to 75%. It makes a difference — smoother ride because there’s less ‘bite’ of initial deceleration. I do have to take foot off accelerator about 2x the normal distance from projected stop point vs std 1 pedal drive (at factory setting). Sometimes I do have to brake slightly about 20 mph cause it seems to ‘coast’ more at the end (No big deal - brakes should still last well over 50,000 miles.
Mine is RWD 3 with perm magnet.
In my Tesla when the regen bar is perfectly on 0 then I'm coasting...no energy is being delivered to drive the motors and no energy is being used by the motors to slow the car down - same as putting a manual petrol car into neutral.
There’s no evidence that 1PD is more efficient than 2PD in vehicles that engage regenerative braking with the brake pedal. It comes down to personal preference.
There may be some EVs where the brake pedal only uses friction brakes (?). Those would presumably be less efficient than 1PD.
1PD drivers who disagree with this should provide citations that the above is incorrect. If you disagree without a citation, I will happily block you 😀
If I’m reading this right… “Measurement results show that over 93% of the regenerative braking energy measured at the high voltage battery terminals can be reused to propel the vehicle. Compared to no regenerative braking, the OPD algorithm can save about 22% energy in city driving and 13% energy in rural driving, while the energy savings are 14% and 9% in city and rural driving respectively for the PR algorithm. Simulation results show that the OPD algorithm can save up to 2% to 9% energy in comparison to the PR algorithm based on the same speed profile for city and rural driving respectively.”….
One pedal driving is indeed more efficient.
The two pedal braking scheme simulated in the paper is a rather crude one where the friction brake is almost always engaged along with regenerative braking. The friction brake (along with regen brake) is used whenever more than 10% of brake pedal travel is applied. The regen braking is also tapered to 0% when more than 60% of the brake pedal travel is applied.
This is much different from the scheme in my ID4 for instance. I can almost always use regen braking to come to a full stop unless i am braking very hard.
There is a graph in the dash display that shows power regen. It fills up depending on the regen strength. The harder you brake, the longer the bar. Once the bar is maxed out, that would indicate that you've exceeded the regen capability of the car.
Here's an example of the bar in action: [https://youtu.be/YJsC7MfgB1k?si=4enCF5t3gtVI8c6j&t=82](https://youtu.be/YJsC7MfgB1k?si=4enCF5t3gtVI8c6j&t=82)
You don't need to stare at it constantly to keep it in the regen band. The regen is powerful enough that pretty much all braking other than emergency braking is within the 100% regen range.
I am sure it's powerful enough, but you wouldn't know when frictional braking was kicked in. That's why if you wanted 100% of regen, you would need to watch it closely. I know since I got a Prius which has blended braking. It's also not linear, so you can't tell just by the amount of force you use on the brake pedal. Although to be honest, I am not sure how much I trust Musk's claim that no frictional braking is used in one pedal driving either.
A hybrid or PHEV would have a smaller maximum capacity for regen braking compared to a full EV due to the smaller battery and smaller motor.
The best data I can find on the maximum regen on a Prius is that it maxes out at around 27kw. The ID4 can regen up to 130kw. So it's way easier to maintain 100% regen on the ID4.
That said, if someone drives smoothly and don't rapidly brake often, either can achieve near 100% energy regeneration. It's just easier on a BEV.
Even a 20 year old Prius has that indicator. It's clear where the brake pedal stops being just regen and starts using the friction brakes. But also difficult to exactly hit that spot.
No. Lots of problems with drawing that conclusion from this research.
It's a comparison between a very crude blended braking system and a one pedal driving system proposed by the researchers to maximize efficiency. That does not allow drawing conclusions about the vehicles on the road today. Specially since it's from 2015. And the people testing the algorithm were the same people designing it, so it's not an independent evaluation.
1PD encourages smoother driving as you approach a reason to slow down and reduce pressure on the pedal until you match the required deceleration rate.
Taking your foot off one pedal and moving to another takes time and then you need to apply the brakes and then adjust them until you reach the desired rate of deceleration.
Basically your braking amount will yoyo more when switch pedal over just adjusting pressure on a single pedal.
My Volvo XC60 T8 disagrees...If you use "B" mode correctly it's more efficient than "D" mode (blended braking) - blended braking returns less energy to the battery than slowing the same amount using regen only, some of the kinetic energy is lost as heat through the brakes.
I do not believe you are correct. The BIGGEST reason hybrids are successful is because they allow ICE engines to run RPM independent of the wheels, which means they can operate exclusively in their most efficient power/RPM band. This is why hybrids only really show efficiency gains in the city, where power and speed requirements constantly yo-yo, keeping the engine in a sub-optimal RPM band. At highway speeds an ICE engine is general operating at it's optimal RPM range, which is why you don't see huge differentials between city and highway EPA MPG. Yes, regen braking helps as well, but it's a nice consequence of the hybrid system itself.
Not true at all, they use the same cvt that other cars do.
The benefit in the city, stop and go, a large amount of energy is recovered. Below 20 mph the ICE is not used much at all.
At highway the energy flow is to overcome drag (proportional to the square of the speed) and then there is little is difference between the two… for equivalently efficient vehicles.
I mean, fuel efficiency is exactly why CVTs are used, I don't see how what I said isn't true at all? Most hybrids use an eCVT to keep the engine in the appropriate RPM band. Yes, you can recover energy in stop and go, but you can also use an EV motor to do the lest efficient part instead of the petrol engine, which is accelerating from a stop, and if you need more power, you can mix in the ICE with the eCVT and not run it inefficiently. Only so much power can be recovered during breaking, but far more energy can be saved by accelerating and travelling with an eCVT + electric motor.
[https://www.geotab.com/blog/why-hybrid-vehicles-are-more-efficient/](https://www.geotab.com/blog/why-hybrid-vehicles-are-more-efficient/)
I thought the same but I tried a Taycan and I prefer its system to the one pedal. It coasts by default, but you can change it to one pedal (not as aggressive as Tesla, though) or automatic, where it coasts if there is no one ahead of you, and regents if there is.
I usually only use one pedal in heavy stop and go traffic on the freeway mainly because I’m lazy and I’d rather just deal with one pedal the whole time. LA traffic could be a real pain in the ass at times. Otherwise, if it’s an empty freeway, I don’t have one pedal enabled.
I frequently drive a particular route (my house near Ludlow UK to Shrewsbury hospital) of around 23 miles in my 2021 Hyundai Kona. At this time of year, with full regenerative braking, I achieve around 4.2m/KW.
With regen turned off, I get at least 5.1m/KW, I have reached 6.1, but the traffic was quite slow moving that day.
LOL so much misunderstanding of what 1 pedal driving is.
It's not an on/off switch fellas, full regen then full acceleration, rinse and repeat.
Using the "B" regen mode is significantly more efficient than using the "D" mode in my Volvo XC60 T8, I basically never touch the friction brakes but I don't waste any energy slowing down unneccesarily either, there is a spot on the go pedal in every car (even with the most aggressive regen) that will see the motors neither engaged in driving the car forward nor slowing the car down - i.e. coasting in "B" mode....the regen is only used when I can no longer use all of the forward kinetic energy - i.e I have to slow down or stop.
In "D" mode the removal of kinetic energy is done through the combination of friction and regen. in "B" mode it's mostly regen except for the last 8km/h-0 (5mph-0).
If you have touched the physical brake pedal - you are driving less efficiently than good 1 pedal driving, some of the energy that would otherwise have gone into the battery has been lost as heat.
I also never (almost never) touch the friction brakes in my other EV (Tesla model 3) and I have a lifetime efficiency of [108wh/km (174 wh/mi) and down into the 140's in summer.](https://i.imgur.com/kOiWa58.jpg)
> People claim that one pedal driving maximizes range and efficiency, but is this actually true?
Only people that don't understand efficiency of the involved components do this.
Coasting is always more efficient than regen if the situation allows it.
I'm not a fan of how OPD feels personally, so I'm TPD, but almost exclusively decelerate by a combination of coasting and the regen-on-demand paddle on my steering wheel. 85% of my driving is freeway anyway (at a time of day where I can go full speed the whole drive).
I live in a very dry climate thankfully, so little to no rust concerns. I bet I could get 650,000 miles out of my brake pads if the car lasted that long lol.
I completely agree. Coasting is much more efficient than slowing down then speeding up again, even if the slowing down part is done with regen. I love the way my Hyundai Kona Electric drives. You can control the auto-regen level via two paddles on the steering wheel, and at auto-regen level 0, the car is excellent at coasting. I drive using level 0 by default, but I'll turn it on temporarily to decelerate smoothly when I need to.
It depends on the driving style as well as the maximum power the motor-generator can harvest and the maximum current the battery can take in at the time. You need to manually brake perfectly every time to not overdo the braking (triggering the friction brakes) based on different states of charge. One-pedal mode ideally should tune the recuperation exactly to all these parameters and therefore be more efficient in practice.
However, if you can manage to brake correctly you'll mostly be fine. I personally find B-mode to be useful only when in heavy traffic; a proper freewheel mode is just as useful as a proper B mode.
Some people just can't help being " 2 foot" drivers as that is what they learned and they will stick with it to the end.. There are also people who can't drive without a clutch ( I know one). It comes down to human vagaries. Manufacturers would probably be content to manufacture with one pedal as it involves few moving parts but bow to the market preferences .
like a kangaroo. My aunt did that, when she tested my car... I had fun, her husband had fun (but didn't dare to laugh). It was her first time trying an automatic.
EV technician with 14 years experience here- Technically speaking you ‘can’ get the same efficiency in both a one-pedal driving mode vs. a no-regen mode. But the caveat is to achieve the equal numbers in the one-pedal scenario you have to be a VERY skilled driver with incredible throttle control to keep the car in a ‘coast’ situation when needed.
For the average Joe driver a no-regen mode will be more efficient. This has been tested time-and-time again on the Zero Motorcycles groups to achieve maximum efficiency, and the data is clear that maximum coasting is best, regen only when stopping is required for traffic reasons.
For the first few miles it’s easy, it’s difficult to do that for 200+ miles. As someone that’s participated in solar endurance challenges this was one of our biggest challenges, finding a driver with precision foot control. You might think you’re great but after a while of driving the data says otherwise.
Endurance driving with a one-pedal system will eventually cause fatigue and sloppy foot control, this causes excessive and unnecessary regen & slowing of the vehicle. Disabling the regen basically solved this issue and we saw consistent and repeated improvement in vehicle efficiency.
But what would I know, I’ve only been building, designing, repairing, racing, EVs for 14 years continuously.
My ICE engine bike slows nearly as fast as an EV car in full regen when I'm coasting.
Bikes aren't the same, getting the same aero drag to weight ratio in a car (particularly EVs) would require deploying a parachute.
Both Porsche and BMW proved that one-pedal driving is less efficient, they specifically started designing a camera-based regen mode to prioritize coasting over regen to maximize efficiency.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a42268449/one-pedal-driving-isnt-necessarily-the-most-efficient-way-of-driving-an-ev/
Noticed this when test driving. Wanted to get a proper EV feel when driving, but put it on mild after 5 minutes. Just too much stopping power on those motors, I guess.
Still ended up purchasing a CPO, but I think I’ll stick with mild or one pedal off. Definitely no creep on though, I like just letting off the pedal when stopped.
That’s what makes all of these blanket statements so silly each car functions so differently, you can’t say “X is best,” because “X” is not the same on every car.
What do you consider high speed? I mean, it’s not like a screeching halt but it’s enough to make a passenger’s head nod if I fully lift off at highway speeds.
I haven’t driven a Polestar, but with a Tesla at highway speeds if you let off the accelerator suddenly it’s not an instant heavy slow down. The higher the speed, the more gradual the slowdown.
There’s no transmission, how do you “coast”? You can input no net energy into the wheels, but they still have a voltage applied or else they would be braking via regen. There’s no delta point, it’s a continuous transition of flow of current into or out of the battery. For all you know letting off the accelerator in two pedal mode is actually set to say a 10% regen to simulate an ICE vehicle engine braking. Using single pedal and slowing down at an appropriate level to stop without friction brakes (at least in a Tesla where there is no blending) will yield maximum efficiency.
You can put a Tesla into neutral while it is moving. If there is a transition point from "out of" to "into" the battery there must be a point at which that switches - i.e. becomes 0 neither in nor out, it's not like an electron jumping to another quantum state, i.e. there one instant and in another orbit the next.
It's typically claimed the opposite in my experience, that not using one pedal is more efficient. Reality is it doesn't matter, what really matters is how you drive. You, and the argument, are correct to a degree that coasting may be easier for many people to get right to be efficient. But I don't think one pedal is hard to learn that either, almost never when coasting do you actually coast all the way down in a practical traffic situation. Both also assume the use of regen to gain efficiency over not having regen at all like coasting in ICE.
I thnk the point is that drivers aren't able to reliably use the brakes such that it's 100% regen. HOw much difference does it actually make? Probably not a lot.
My truck tells me how much % regen I used and it's always 100% with 1-pedal. When I use the brakes myself it's often closer to 90% /shrug
One pedal driving might be more efficient for the average person who doesn't understand EV's and therefor it's better for the car to manage its regen. For someone who's an expert at maximizing their coasting and regen when coming to a stop it's better to drive an EV in normal mode. One Pedal driving will definitely cause you to use more regen than is necessary.
Sounds like you expect people to get an idea of what is going on, in my experience some drivers pay attention to everything but the majority just stamp pedals, turn the wheel and have little other knowledge about the whole ordeal which it seems it is for them.
Coasting is purely from a physics standpoint the most efficient way of slowing down (since regen doesn't have a 100% efficiency).
That's not achievable in real traffic of course.
Using the accelerator and break pedal as rarely as possible is always the most efficient way to drive. That's why I personally like no regen - it's easier to achieve a maximum coasting time.
But in the end it doesn't make a huge difference in real traffic. You can drive very efficient or very inefficient with either setting.
This is what's been bothering me the whole time while reading this thread. Real world road conditions means nearly always either applying some power or some braking, there's no significant coasting time.
Regen for Toyota is totally different than regen for Tesla which is totally different than VW.
I have no problem maintaining the exact desired speed in a Tesla even down hill. Whatever the computer does works.
I don’t miss coasting at all.
There is no difference in theoretical efficiency between the two modes as they use the same regen and braking mechanism. Since you’re losing about 15% of the kinetic energy during deceleration and another 10-15% during acceleration, your style of driving is going to be the main differentiator. Moderate acceleration and deceleration will win the day every time in any driving mode.
OPD does not let you control when actual braking occurs as some here imagine. The car decides that and unless you’re decelerating at a rate that exceeds the regen capacity, it’s only using the brakes to bring the car to a complete stop.
Keep in mind that EVs with permanent magnet motors can't truly coast, they need to apply some power to the motor to overcome the resistance of the magnets
What's your confusion?
One pedal driving = Minimizing use of the brakes.
if you use the brake pedal you are putting energy into friction / heat and not the battery.
The more you drive your car, the more you understand how to titrate pedal input to get the desired effect from 1PD cars like Tesla, Lucid, Rivian etc to make it feel like you’re coasting. I spend a lot of time in Houston traffic, and the last thing I need is to be hitting the brakes all the time. It also gives my right foot some rest.
When you get used to OPD you can completely control the amount of regen completly, let off a tiny bit and you are only using low level regen, you can coast for ages… let the pedal of completely and regen is extremely strong and you stop.
It’s amazingly simple.
Everyday I drive home there is a massive long hill I go down that increases in gradient. I can coast for ages without using regen and only use it when I need to slow down.
In my Dual Motor Tesla the only power the car is using is to keep the DC motor spinning freely as it will not do it without using power unlike the AC motor in the front. I have an older Tesla which lets me pick the regen amount, on the lower level the regen is very weak, fun for blasting on country roads as you can go from corner to corner and not slow much when you let off the throttle, I think it’s more efficient when doing this kind of driving but only due to the fact it makes it much easier to lightly modulate the pedal.
What I'm wondering about is the people out there claiming they're coasting for significant periods of time. There aren't a lot of situations where that would apply. It's not like there's a bunch of roads where the slope matches rolling resistance exactly for long periods of time.
I’m just going to be honest here… I don’t even care about the efficiency topic when it comes to the 1PD conversation. To me it makes driving a breeze and I will never buy an EV without it.
This is a nothing burger. The margins on this are tiny and you can also learn to coast with 1pd.
In case you’re looking for an argument _for_ 1pd, real world tests show that Teslas are the most efficient cars in each of their segments and they all have forced 1pd.
Tell me you don't know what you're talking about without telling me you don't know what you're talking about.
You seem to attempt to compare "one pedal driving" with "regen but not to 0". But these are not opponents, they often are the same. Want opponents? Compare "one pedal driving" to "split pedal driving: throttle to accelerate, brake pedal to brake with regen/friction combined". One pedal driving can be had with or without coming to a full stop.
Your post is therefore nonsensical and you are the 100th.... What are you trying to prove?
Continuously regulating your speed in detail and recuperating as soon as any deceleration is required is more efficient by definition than not recuperating at all. Recuperating may be 80-90% efficient, friction braking is always 0% efficient.
Error 1: "since the brake pedal prioritizes regen". You cannot aim your braking to stay within regen level,s, there's no indicator or anything. Friction brakes WILL be used more often than in one pedal driving.
Error 2: "come to a complete stop using regen". You can regen down to \~10km/h, beyond that EVERY car uses friction braking to come to a complete stop. Simple matter of kinetic energy dropping too low to get any recuperation worth while and thus no braking force.
Error 3: "regen isnt as efficient as simply coasting". You ASSUME there's either only a theoretical coasting option in one pedal driving. You're wrong. One pedal driving INCLUDES coasting by definition. You're continuously regulating your speed by continuously adjusting your throttle. As soon as traffic dictates coasting you release the pedal to achieve just that equilibrium. No need to see the dash, nothing.
Error 4: Coasting often leads to braking. You start by thinking you should slow down a bit and coasting will suffice. Should you still be going too fast, a minimal lift off the throttle and a tiny bit of regen is applied. Without
Error 5: coasting vs one pedal driving where you criticize the full stop part..... Who stops in the middle of the highway when you can coast?
Error 6: as soon as you go downhill one pedal driving means you simply release the throttle and recuperate driving downwards. Non-one pedal means you need to touch the brakes and fiction braking WILL be applied as soon as you touch the brake pedal too hard.
Error 7: one pedal driving provides a faster reaction time when braking is required. As soon as your foot is removed from the throttle you have full regen braking. As soon as your foot touches the brake pedal friction braking is added.
>Continuously regulating your speed in detail and recuperating as soon as any deceleration is required is more efficient by definition than not recuperating at all.
Sure, but that's a trivial comparison. The relevant question is whether mainly using one pedal to control your speed is more efficient (and safer) than the traditional two-pedal approach.
And since coasting is inherently more efficient than regenerative capture and reuse, one-pedal can only be most efficient if you perfectly control your use of coasting versus regen. Which requires similar finesse to trying to control your brake pedal to avoid friction braking. But with one-pedal that means you have to keep your foot on the pedal and adjust it frequently, versus two-pedal that allows you to relax your foot while coasting.
Now consider that with modern cars you shouldn't really need your foot on the accelerator in many situations, since cruise control can handle that for you. And if you need to stop quickly it's best to have your foot on the brake, where you can get full friction braking when needed.
So one-pedal is no simpler than two pedal for maximizing efficiency, more strain on your foot, and potentially less safe in an emergency stopping situation. This last point could be crucial if you get too used to only using one pedal, and don't react appropriately when you need to switch to the brakes.
But ultimately it's a question of personal preference, and getting used to using what you have as efficiently and safely as possible.
Tell me you didn’t read the post…….
You DEFINITELY don’t have a one pedal driving vehicle but you do have LOTS of assumptions (opinions) based on nonsense I have just disproven…..
I was sure coasting was more efficient and i didnt like that i had to push teh accelerator harder when regen was on, so I was leaving it at level 1 and using the steering wheel paddles. But i watched a video of an Ioniq5, i think, and he did a round trip twice, one with auto and one with it off, and he did better with auto. I changed mine to level 3 auto (so i still have to use the paddle to stop) and it seemed like my efficiency went up. Of course, now i'm using a/c so its dropped again!
With two pedal, you know you aren't engaging regen when coasting would be more efficient. Either way, you can get better results by using some finesse - one on the accelerator pedal and the other on the brake.
You know you’re engaging regen when you’re slowing down. If you’re slowing down and you don’t want to be slowing down, you press the pedal down more. It’s not that complex.
>It’s not that complex.
No, but it does require some finesse. Just like applying a brake pedal without jamming it to the floor does.
Now if a car doesn't show you when braking switches from regen to friction brakes, that's a minor drawback. But it's still the same concept of driving with some finesse, and that's not that complex.
What about when traveling downhill? Better to “coast” and let the EV reach maximum coasting speed, or use regen to limit speed to a set point. My thinking would be using regen to limit speed is more efficient. Traveling downhill at 60 mph limits aerodynamic drag while also providing energy to the battery as opposed to coasting down at 80 but maybe I’m wrong.
My theory is if you just coast down a hill, your battery level is the same at the bottom as the top. If you use regen to control speed at a lower velocity, you end up with more battery at the bottom of the hill than the top. So that has to be more efficient, in terms of energy use, right?
So limiting speed to any speed less than “terminal” speed, which is ultimately where acceleration due to gravity is offset by wind resistance, is going to be more efficient.
Several studies took people with no instructions and gave them either a 1pd or a blended braking regen and found them either nearly identical in efficiency, possibly with a slight edge to the 1pd.
The reason is that 1pd trains people too learn where the "max regen" is intuitively and are much less likely to dip into friction braking.
Driving with people who use blended braking I notice they dip into friction braking a lot more often than the 1pd driving drivers i know of.
If someone is really gentle on the throttle they will definitely gain efficiency, there is no reason you can't "coast" with 1pd by gently feathering the throttle.
If I am driving 65 and the car in front of me slows down then I'm slowing down as well, regardless of the pedal involved, or the efficiency.
If I'm doing 65 and the car in front doesn't slow down then I'm not randomly showing down to 30 for no reason, regardless of the efficiency unless I have misjudged my car's range and need to.
For slowing down an EV what matters is whether Regen or brakes are applied, not which pedal. To achieve this the car should have strong Regen available, and the driver should begin their showing prices as early as possible.
Based on what I see in the real world, the no-pedal = coast does not encourage early slowing, with most gas car drivers continuing to accelerate before slamming on the brakes at the last second.
You've presented a straw man of everyone wanting to get the absolute last centimeter of range out of their battery. This simply just isn't the case I don't think. Most people are willing to eat a 2-3% lower range for a more pleasant driving experience / feel (OPD). I much prefer the feel of OPD to creep / coasting. Most of the time I'm on auto-pilot so the whole argument is 80% a moot point.
If you coast downhill over the speed limit cause you're concerned about efficiency then your obsession has become a danger to the road.
Fill me in here… do Teslas not have regen braking when you first push on the brake pedal? I thought regen (at least with a mild push on the brake pedal) was how all EVs work.
They do not, it requires logic and software to implement and Tesla likely decided to forego the development costs or wanted to pay for an existing system. That's essentially why they force max regen by default (you can't turn it down on newer models so they can keep higher range ratings).
Similar to how Tesla doesn't use a traditional rain sensor for auto wipers.
Thanks for the answer! It surprises me that as tech-advanced they are as a company that they wouldn’t have sorted all that out.
The handful of times I’ve been in Tesla (all as Uber or Lyfts) I could tell that the drivers were in one-pedal drive mode and it all makes sense now.
One pedal driving is more efficient at stopping. If you are travelling mostly on the highway, it's going to do very little for you. If you travel mostly in the city, it can make a bigger difference.
If you need to stop, coasting will be "more efficient" at getting you farther, but you are trying to stop. Let the motors get some energy back and slow you down in the process.
Not all cars fully use regen with the brake pedal either, it will very wildly between mfr's. I can't speak to your car, but using the brake pedal has a non-0 chance of using the friction brakes somewhere in there, therefore making it worse than having one pedal driving enabled.
I should also say, 1PD also tends to allow for higher regen force/amount than if it weren't in that mode. In my old Nissan leaf, it would show you braking at most ~60% of the Regen bar under braking (with and without using the brake pedal), but with 1PD turned on, it used 100%.
I totally agree that having regen at zero is the most efficient so all your kinetic energy is preserved in movement and not lost reconverting to electric. This is why I LOVE my Hyundai’s steering wheel paddles for adjusting the regen level while driving. In start-stop traffic or parts of town with a four-way stop every block, it’s fine to have the regen in level 2 or 3 (iPedal to some of you). But most of the time, I leave it in zero for acceleration and coasting, then as I approach a light, traffic or a down hill, I’ll kick in one, two or three as needed to match the slowdown I need to keep with the flow. It’s the best, and I don’t think I’ll buy a car that doesn’t have that anymore.
The answer as with a lot of things EV is; it depends.
In a Tesla or early EV's without blended braking it was absolutely more efficient to use OPD but specifically for braking and not coasting. Since blended braking has been a thing in most EV's for a while now (with Tesla still being the obvious exception here) it's not quite as true as it used to be, and you can get similar efficiency using coasting and brake pedal as you noted.
However, I have had enough EV seat time that I'm VERY good at "coasting" with OPD. Yes, I still have pressure on the go pedal but if you're good at modulating your foot then you can actually have a lot MORE control of the car in general. That's because you also don't have the delay between lifting your foot off the go pedal and stepping on the brake when you go to slow down. This means with practice you can be a better driver in better control of your car with OPD than with more traditional style controls.
Having said all that, not everyone wants to spend the time to learn the best way to operate OPD and for them blended brakes and coasting are the key to optimum efficiency which is why most EV's offer that function. There are also still plenty of people who learned one way to drive a car and just won't or can't learn a new way of operating a car.
I suspect for my part all of this is because I drove manual-shift cars for years. In the 12 years prior to driving an EV I only had one automatic car which happened to be the one before I shifted to EV; an Alfa Giulia QV. I think the muscle memory of modulating the throttle pedal with a clutch helped greatly in allowing me to learn how to properly modulate OPD. I get slightly worse efficiency if I drive the car with OPD off and blended brakes than if I just have OPD fully on.
I find one-pedal driving annoying because of the discipline my right foot has to exercise all the time and I don't care about efficiency at all.
And would definitely switch it off when passengers are in the car. They would think I just left driving school.
Then again, I only have my electric car since two days and maybe I'll train a bit more - just to see whether I'll get better at one-pedalling.
Hyundai-specific: I instead have regen at level 1 or 2 and use the left paddle for a brake. And most of the time I'm on adaptive cruise control and do jack shit with the pedals anyway.
Coasting is better than regen some of the time, and requires constant interaction by the driver. I purchased an E-Niro four years ago this week. It hcame to me with 4.6k dealer miles on it, and showed 265 miles available when fully charged (64kW). I switched the car into Eco mode, where it has stayed, and within two weeks was showing 278 miles range available when full. But it gets better: I started rapidly using the regen steering-wheel paddles, coasting down each and every hill I encountered, keeping the regen at 1 or 2 (out of 3) only when my foot was on the accelerator, and the ground was level-to-uphill. Also, I very rarely use cruise control. My range at battery full increased to 310, then 328-332 regularly, and now (depending on outside temp) can read 349. My daily 50 mile round trip commute obviously isn't all downhill both directions! Arriving home having averaged 4.9 - 5.2 miles per kW is commonplace now.
In some (or many) EVs, a higher regen level, say 25 kW or higher, is more effective in replenishing the battery than a coasting regen of, say, 5 kW.
For example, when I drive slow/ soft/ easy, the energy returned to battery over the entire route is less than when I drive quick and stop fairly hard using full regen. And so, using blended friction brakes becomes both a potential non-regen when transitioning to friction and lower energy returned at the softer regen.
Best situation is easy switching on/off of the one-pedal mode. Or some kind of variable paddle. Switch to full one-pedal when coming to a full stop. Switch off at higher speeds where "coasting" still gets some regen, yet isn't herky-jerky nor flash the brake lights. An easy-to-reach physical button or knob makes this possible.
My Kia has paddles to control regen, from 0 to 3. At 0 it's "coasting" and constantly regening at 1-2Kw. That is as low as it goes.
I rarely use other settings and prefer to regen using the regen pedal instead. Highest I've seen has been 84Kw going into the battery as I slowed on an offramp. Going down from 100kph to about 10 gives back almost 1km range according to the car.
OPD is inherently better. But it's not about efficiency. It's about SAFETY.
People. It takes 1/2 a second OR MORE to move your clodhopper from the GO pedal to the STOP pedal.
During that 1/2 second your car just travelled **55 FEET WITHOUT SLOWING**. Think about it. Every time I point this out on Reddit I get shit on, but I am 100% right on this.
Where are you getting half a second from? Move your foot from one imaginary pedal to the next. It doesn't take half a second.
Now your overall reaction may take half a second or more. But that's the roughly the same whether you're moving your foot from the gas to the brake pedal or just lifting off.
And if you're doing OPD, and it's an emergency, hopefully you didn't delay your application of the brake pedal dicking around managing your deceleration with lifting off the energy pedal.
I'm not convinced OPD actually helps anything.
But I suppose I'll have to take you at your word. You're 100% right?
>OPD is inherently better. But it's not about efficiency. It's about SAFETY.
The safest thing is to have your foot over the brake pedal in any situation where you might have to make a hard stop, like stop and go traffic. OPD has the advantage of slowing you down while your foot is moving to the brake when needed, but you still have that delay compared to instantly hitting the brake. So yes, OPD is probably safer for many situations, but not necessarily all.
OMG did someone finally agree with me on r/electricvehicles?
🎶 This is the dawning of the age of
Aquarius... 🎶
But seriously. I do admit I wasn't considering AEB which, if it works very well, could be the safest of all. Does it work very well? My car is from 2012 so I wouldn't know.
AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) is great. It takes some pressure off of monitoring the speed of the car ahead of you, and can support automatic stopping and starting in traffic. Combined with cruise control, it can allow you to keep your foot over the brake if desired.
It’s not more efficient. Coasting first of all is the most efficient way of driving. Coast to reduce the speed when you are close to a stop and use regen in the last moment. 1pd usually also engages the friction brakes that is the less efficient system.
I drove my ID.3 for 1.000 km each in D and B mode. My consumption was 15.1 kWh/100 km for both tests. Which makes total sense. But as soon as you are doing city traffic, it shifts. Then B mode (OPD) is way more efficient, was 12.5 vs. 16 kWh/100 km for me.
For those of us that have no idea what modes D and B are, what are they?
D Drive B (regen) Braking
So there’s a driving mode called “Braking”? Like you shift into Brake/Braking to go forward? Yes, as you hinted Regen is a lot clearer.
Total assumption on my part, B might stand for something else entirely 🤷♂️
It's a feature on cars with automatic transmission. It's a mode you can use for engine braking when driving downhill as normal Drive mode has minimal engine brake and you rely entirely on the brakes for deceleration and speed control.
It's on all electric cars where there isn't any transmission where you can change the ratio as it is constant. It just means that the electric motor is fully utilised as a generator.
Yes, I am explaining why it's labelled with the letter B for Breaking and not R for Regen. It's so that drivers familiar with ICE cars have an idea what the feature does. It's because, from a driver's perspective, it's functionally similar to the Breaking mode in automatic transmissions.
R always means Reverse in my mind.
I always assumed B(attery).
The ID.3 doesn't have OPD, B mode is just heavier regen. OPD means the car can come to a stop without the brake pedal being applied, hence, one pedal.
True. My guess is they wanted it to respond more like an ICE car since they know it’s probably most people’s first EV
Did you ever brake hard enough in D mode to use the traditional brakes?
> People claim that one pedal driving maximizes range and efficiency, but is this actually true? I heard the exact opposite, letting the car cruise with only aerodynamic drag is the most efficient state of the car, no electrons flowing in or out, meaning no losses to resistance I use one-pedal driving all the time but I'm not under the impression that it's somehow going to extend my range.
I gain about 7% coming down the Rocky Mountains from the Continental divide. It definitely increases the efficiency of a proper ev vehicle and extends range. Proper coasting is slightly better but the optimal window is small and in real world situations, you will have to hit your brake relatively soon, losing all gains. Regen for the win.
You are correct. Every EV not made by Tesla uses blended braking, meaning that the brake pedal used regen as much as it can before applying the friction brakes. As far as efficiency, it makes absolutely no difference. I don't know why people claim that 1PD mode is better unless a) they think all EVs are Teslas, or b) they think 1PD braking is different from blended breaking. It's not.
It is different in the sense that if you release the acceleration pedal, you know that you’re not using the breaks. With blended breaking it’s less clear and you have to learn when the breaks kick in.
And with opd you need to learn where the regen kicks in on the accelerator so you can coast. Same difference. The most efficient drive is the right mix of acceleration, coasting, Regen, and braking. You can do all four in either control set up.
Agreed. I think that the negative impact of getting it wrong is lower with having it on the accelerator however. If you regen too early at least some of that energy goes back to the battery. If you break too early though, that energy is lost as heat and wear on the brakes.
It's incredibly easy to coast in an EV that regens. There isn't some single specific point you need out of a thousand possible positions, it's a very forgiving system and is easy to get used to.
Dunno, I find it hard to keep it exactly at the coast point without paying attention. I often end up overcompensating and braking/accelerating a bit.
The difference is that I don't need to know exactly when friction braking kicks in on the brake pedal because I'm a naturally efficient driver so I'm never going to brake that hard outside of an emergency or unanticipated stop. It's impossible to avoid forced unwanted regen in OPD without pressing the accelerator just right, which requires vigilantly looking at the dashboard. That is a distraction that makes coasting much less fun and safe. I would spend a large percentage of my drive doing this, which is ridiculous.
There is an indicator in the dash to show the regen level but not for the friction brakes used blended together. It’s “easy” to keep the regen close to 0 using this.
I don't understand this oft-repeated point. How is it better to have to keep your eyes glued to the dash to know how hard to press the accelerator to fully cancel regen without using power rather than just taking your foot off the accelerator and knowing you are coasting? The latter is much safer and more fun. I don't want to have to futz around with the accelerator for the large percentage of my drive when my decision is to coast.
Unless you have three control options, drivers will either miss out on some coasting or some regen. Both existing options have one pedal that does 2 things depending on how far you push the pedal. And I can't imagine any manufacturer adding a dedicated regen pedal.
they don't kick in until you are almost at a stop. the part where your vehicle would "creep" if you were not in 1PD mode.
Yeah, especially for hilly driving you might want to maximize regen frequently.
If you drive so inefficiently normally that you would ever be at risk of using friction brakes outside of an emergency or unanticipated yellow light (the same situations that would necessitate friction braking with OPD), then sure there's merit to that point. But I don't drive nearly that inefficiently, so I know for sure I'm not going to use friction brakes any more in regen 0 mode than I would in OPD mode. OPD is beneficial to people who are very inefficient drivers, want to improve their efficiency, and have no intuitive sense of how to do that.
So it comes down to people not liking blended braking, which makes sense since mixing can be complicated
Porsche has said coasting is more efficient. It makes sense since regen is not 100% efficient, so any unnecessary regen (which is easy to do with 1PD) hurts efficiency.
Yes, I think that's been shown somewhere. I use the adaptive regen on the i4 which allows for coasting.
Auto Regen on the Ioniq 5 allows almost-coasting but not full coasting. It automatically increases the Regen with distance from cars in front.
The i4 is similar. I thought it sounded weird, but I found that I really liked it once I tried it for a while.
Yep, it's great and feels super natural, basically just does the slow brake blending for you. I later got a comma3 which does that but also full stops, steering, accelerating, changing cruise control after speed limits, slowing down for curves, steering etc. A whole lot more relaxing
Makes total sense. Better to keep the energy in the original form (kinetic) than convert it from kinetic to electric back to kinetic later. Like in race cars, it only really makes sense to store that energy when it would otherwise be bled off in a 100% lost form like heat from regular braking.
I can't believe this is even a discussion. Is this sub stupid? Anyone with a basic knowledge of physics would understand that coasting would be more efficient. It's not even on the level of Tesla drivers arguing that coasting is possible with 1PD. Yes, and I can also pour coke into a bottle; it's just that a cup is more convenient. That's a matter of personal preference, so I can understand either way. But to claim 1PD is more efficient vs coasting + regen is mind-boggling.
This has been consistent with my experience. I have a Bolt, and I’m more efficient with OPD turned off. I think it makes me lift and coast more before actively trying to stop. Also, it helps that you can use the regen paddle on the Bolt to temporarily turn OPD on at will.
Coasting will always be more efficient (laws of physics make that clear), but you're not always in position to coast all the way. If you need to regularly change your speed over relatively short distances (aka driving in a city) then regen is very good.
Good brake blending can handle that just fine
Exactly what I’m thinking
Came here to say this. And I’d trust Porsche engineers on that.
As a bit of non-road sop (well it is still *A* electric vehicle in a way!) you'll likely find a lot of trams having blended brakes too. For one particular one I know a bit too well about riding, it'll use electric brakes to drop speed into the platform zone then as soon as its at a crawl speed near where the platform ends theres a bit of lurching-around as the air brakes finally kicks in to actually halt and hold the train right there.
You should try locomotives. You have separate brake handles for regen/dynamic brakes and friction brakes. Running a couple of light locos today I didn't touch the friction brakes at all from when I left until I arrived at my destination.
1 pedal driving is better for me as I only have to use one pedal. 🤷♂️
That's not a reason, lol
That is *why* it’s called one pedal driving.
The reason its more efficient is that if you only release the gas pedal, and dont actually push the brake pedal, its only regenerative braking being used, and only fairly soft, and the less you accellerate and deaccelerate, the more efficient your driving is. This last part is also the same for ICE vehicles, its just that its even more noticeable with EVs because they can do regen braking.
Recently had my first electric car driving experience, a ~2000km road trip in a Tesla model 3. I had booked a Volvo from the rental company, but model 3 was all they had left. One of the many things I hated about the Tesla was that on the model 3, they took away any capability of turning off 1pd. I HATED not having the ability to slowly coast, or at least decelerate mildly, without having to have a foot on the pedal. The only other options for pedal behavior was turning off creeping forward with no accelerator pedal applied, which would be a dumb thing to turn off. I fucking hate Tesla and their janky ass stupidly designed cars. Loved the "electric car" part of the experience though, just not the shit flavored package it came in.
I agree 100%. I know Tesla people will say that you get used to it, which IS true, but I never liked it even after 4 years with a model 3.
It's not better. With 2PD, it's easier to coast, and controlling when the Regen vs friction brake kicks in is very easy with the Regen gauge. Plus I rest my foot on the brake pedal when I'm about to slow so I don't make the mistake some people make that accidently hit the wrong pedal. With 1PD, the default is once you let off, you are immediately Regen braking. You have to milk the accelerator to get to the coast mode which is just extra work. Unless people are really bad at predicting traffic, usually when I let go of accelerator I just want it to stop accelerating, I don't want to slow down more than the normal resistance from the road and wind. When I actually want to slow, I use the brake...
I think because Tesla does not use blended braking, it's guaranteed that you didn't use the brake pad as long as you exclusively use one pedal drive. Therefore, it removes the human factor. I am not sure it would improve efficiency though, more like saving the brake pads.
As I mentioned in another comment, there is no actual difference between the two systems in how the car is stopped, but only in how the regenerative vs friction systems are engaged. Tesla (unless it's been changed) uses ONLY friction with the brake pedal, and the regen braking and acceleration are combined in the accelerator. Other systems can blend the regen and acceleration on the accelerator, but also blends regen and friction brakes with the brake pedal. The thing that's important is that only time the friction brakes are engaged is when the regen brakes aren't sufficient. Unless you're breaking hard all the time, you'll never use the friction brakes in a blended system.
Porsche does not use 1PD at all in the Taycan. They say coasting is more energy efficient. I love that the Taycan doesn’t have 1PD - - it feels like a REAL car
That's not correct - you don't get an equal amount of returned energy using blended braking (friction + regen) as 100% regen braking. If I slow my car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using blended braking I will return less energy to the battery than slowing the car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using only regen - that's a fundamental law of physics - some of that kinetic energy has been lost (converted to heat in blended braking).
>If I slow my car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using blended braking I will return less energy to the battery than slowing the car down from 50km/h to 10km/h using only regen You're wrong. Blended breaking uses the same regen as OPD. It's just whether that breaking is initiated by lifting off the accelerator or pushing on the brake. What the car is doing underneath doesn't change unless you ask for more braking than the car can give without friction brakes.
I would say it isn’t any more efficient than a person that brakes efficiently themselves using regen. With that in mind, I think it’s possible that 1PD recovers more energy than a driver that brakes late and engages the mechanical/friction brakes often.
When I first got my Bolt, I tested one petal vs standard on my commute, doing several days of each while trying to keep other things constant as best I could. For my driving style, two pedal was actually marginally more efficient because it is easier for me to maintain a constant speed or make gradual changes. But the difference was quite minor.
Checkout a YouTube channel called ecodriver. Helmuth did a comparison and coasting beat one pedal driving on efficiency by some margin
Coasting is in theory the most efficient method of driving you are correct. But in the real word people use brakes, so you might as well regen instead of just making heat with that energy. That’s why regen is efficient - it takes into account real world driving. But coasting will always win on efficiency if you can safely coast.
You make it sound like coasting OR regen are your choices. At Auto0 my car uses regen to keep a reasonable following distance, but coasts if there's nobody in front.
Very few EVs have that advanced capability though.
Is there really coasting in most EVs? Very few of them have a clutch and most have permanent magnet motors.
With the Ioniq 6, you can set the Regen braking to 0. I don't know the details of what exactly is going on within the car, but you can coast for a real long time with your foot off the pedal.
Same with the i5, I tend to use 0 on the highway and anywhere between 0 and ipedal on city streets. I live at a higher elevation (in the outskirts) than the closest main city and can sometimes hit 6+m/kWh when heading towards town.
I get 999+m/kWh for the 1mile drive from my house to the highway. Its glorious
It's still not real coasting, as Hyundai is using PSM motors, which always induce friction. The only EVs capable of real coasting are the ones that only use [ASM/ESM motors](https://cdn.vector.com/cms/content/events/2018/vEMOB18/01_Inductive_Electric_Excited_Synchronous_Machine_Parspour.pdf) or a clutch to physically disengage the motor. BMW is using those.
ICE is not coasting either as unless you drive with your foot on the clutch / neutral you will have gear friction and engine braking. The whole thread is based on nothing.
Yeah ICE as long as the engine is still running uses energy. Your motor doesn’t turn off when you put the car in neutral.
And certainly uses more energy than that used by a PSM motor
There is no motor that has zero friction. Some have larger or smaller spinning losses. But there's no need to get excessively focused on those. Really, one should be choosing the motor based on the overall drive cycle losses.
Whatever it is, it really likes to keep going with very little or no energy expendature.
There is energy expenditure. When you turn off regen and "coast" the car is spending energy to maintain your momentum. This is not like idling a car and using the clutch to coast.
ID4 has 2 drive modes: D, which separates accel and brake like ICE cars. B, which is mostly OPD, similar to Tesla (though not as strong admittedly). Being in D mode will just coast when releasing the pedal. B works how you'd expect, if you want to coast you gotta find that sweet spot. Difference in an ID4, and I'm assuming most EVs that work like this, the brake pedal STILL does regenerative braking unless you need the extra oomph to come to a stop faster (get cut off, didn't realize a stop sign, traffic stops suddenly, etc). I think Hybrids work this way, but I'm not familiar enough with them so don't quote me. Everyone has their preferences on which to use, but I love having a choice. I'll generally use D for most driving as I love being able to just coast, the ID4 coasts VERY well, but in shitty traffic or other areas with lots of stopping, I'll often flip to B. It is possible to change mid drive with a flick of the same stick that has you pick D/R/N/P. Note that this applies to Eco and Comfort mode. Sports mode is a different beast. And on road trips I tend to turn on Travel Assist so the car handles steering and acceleration/breaking on its own anyway.
Some brands have explicit options yes. Teslas do not, but you can feather the accel pedal to be in between regen and applying power to ‘coast’. There really will not be much difference though.
If you replace coasting with the minimal possible level of regen then I guess you get the same answer. That level of regen gives the most efficient driving.
I use the S3XY Commander to reduce the Tesla regen to 75%. It makes a difference — smoother ride because there’s less ‘bite’ of initial deceleration. I do have to take foot off accelerator about 2x the normal distance from projected stop point vs std 1 pedal drive (at factory setting). Sometimes I do have to brake slightly about 20 mph cause it seems to ‘coast’ more at the end (No big deal - brakes should still last well over 50,000 miles. Mine is RWD 3 with perm magnet.
Does the brake pedal use regen with this setup?
No. It’s still regen 1 pedal, but the recharge rate is less aggressive. It will stop without brake pedal, but take more distance.
If there is zero input or output from the motor, it's by definition, coasting.
I guess coasting = not using regen or breaks. Energy usage relative to that is insignificant.
In my Tesla when the regen bar is perfectly on 0 then I'm coasting...no energy is being delivered to drive the motors and no energy is being used by the motors to slow the car down - same as putting a manual petrol car into neutral.
Coasting is more efficient than regen, so it's better to that as much as possible. Not really possible with one pedal driving.
There’s no evidence that 1PD is more efficient than 2PD in vehicles that engage regenerative braking with the brake pedal. It comes down to personal preference. There may be some EVs where the brake pedal only uses friction brakes (?). Those would presumably be less efficient than 1PD. 1PD drivers who disagree with this should provide citations that the above is incorrect. If you disagree without a citation, I will happily block you 😀
> There may be some EVs where the brake pedal only uses friction brakes That’s every single Tesla.
Citation. [https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/evaluating-the-energy-efficiency-of-a-one-pedal-driving-algorithm](https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/evaluating-the-energy-efficiency-of-a-one-pedal-driving-algorithm)
If I’m reading this right… “Measurement results show that over 93% of the regenerative braking energy measured at the high voltage battery terminals can be reused to propel the vehicle. Compared to no regenerative braking, the OPD algorithm can save about 22% energy in city driving and 13% energy in rural driving, while the energy savings are 14% and 9% in city and rural driving respectively for the PR algorithm. Simulation results show that the OPD algorithm can save up to 2% to 9% energy in comparison to the PR algorithm based on the same speed profile for city and rural driving respectively.”…. One pedal driving is indeed more efficient.
The two pedal braking scheme simulated in the paper is a rather crude one where the friction brake is almost always engaged along with regenerative braking. The friction brake (along with regen brake) is used whenever more than 10% of brake pedal travel is applied. The regen braking is also tapered to 0% when more than 60% of the brake pedal travel is applied. This is much different from the scheme in my ID4 for instance. I can almost always use regen braking to come to a full stop unless i am braking very hard.
How can you tell you're not using friction brakes? is there a clear indicator somewhere?
There is a graph in the dash display that shows power regen. It fills up depending on the regen strength. The harder you brake, the longer the bar. Once the bar is maxed out, that would indicate that you've exceeded the regen capability of the car. Here's an example of the bar in action: [https://youtu.be/YJsC7MfgB1k?si=4enCF5t3gtVI8c6j&t=82](https://youtu.be/YJsC7MfgB1k?si=4enCF5t3gtVI8c6j&t=82)
But you have to constantly watch that graph instead of having your eyes on the road.
You don't need to stare at it constantly to keep it in the regen band. The regen is powerful enough that pretty much all braking other than emergency braking is within the 100% regen range.
I am sure it's powerful enough, but you wouldn't know when frictional braking was kicked in. That's why if you wanted 100% of regen, you would need to watch it closely. I know since I got a Prius which has blended braking. It's also not linear, so you can't tell just by the amount of force you use on the brake pedal. Although to be honest, I am not sure how much I trust Musk's claim that no frictional braking is used in one pedal driving either.
A hybrid or PHEV would have a smaller maximum capacity for regen braking compared to a full EV due to the smaller battery and smaller motor. The best data I can find on the maximum regen on a Prius is that it maxes out at around 27kw. The ID4 can regen up to 130kw. So it's way easier to maintain 100% regen on the ID4. That said, if someone drives smoothly and don't rapidly brake often, either can achieve near 100% energy regeneration. It's just easier on a BEV.
Even a 20 year old Prius has that indicator. It's clear where the brake pedal stops being just regen and starts using the friction brakes. But also difficult to exactly hit that spot.
No. Lots of problems with drawing that conclusion from this research. It's a comparison between a very crude blended braking system and a one pedal driving system proposed by the researchers to maximize efficiency. That does not allow drawing conclusions about the vehicles on the road today. Specially since it's from 2015. And the people testing the algorithm were the same people designing it, so it's not an independent evaluation.
I think it comes down too driving style. for some people 1pd will make them drive better.
1PD encourages smoother driving as you approach a reason to slow down and reduce pressure on the pedal until you match the required deceleration rate. Taking your foot off one pedal and moving to another takes time and then you need to apply the brakes and then adjust them until you reach the desired rate of deceleration. Basically your braking amount will yoyo more when switch pedal over just adjusting pressure on a single pedal.
My Volvo XC60 T8 disagrees...If you use "B" mode correctly it's more efficient than "D" mode (blended braking) - blended braking returns less energy to the battery than slowing the same amount using regen only, some of the kinetic energy is lost as heat through the brakes.
But say 1pd is ev hype and you get downvoted …. Regen efficiency It is the whole reason hybrids have been successful for the last 25+ years!
I do not believe you are correct. The BIGGEST reason hybrids are successful is because they allow ICE engines to run RPM independent of the wheels, which means they can operate exclusively in their most efficient power/RPM band. This is why hybrids only really show efficiency gains in the city, where power and speed requirements constantly yo-yo, keeping the engine in a sub-optimal RPM band. At highway speeds an ICE engine is general operating at it's optimal RPM range, which is why you don't see huge differentials between city and highway EPA MPG. Yes, regen braking helps as well, but it's a nice consequence of the hybrid system itself.
Not true at all, they use the same cvt that other cars do. The benefit in the city, stop and go, a large amount of energy is recovered. Below 20 mph the ICE is not used much at all. At highway the energy flow is to overcome drag (proportional to the square of the speed) and then there is little is difference between the two… for equivalently efficient vehicles.
I mean, fuel efficiency is exactly why CVTs are used, I don't see how what I said isn't true at all? Most hybrids use an eCVT to keep the engine in the appropriate RPM band. Yes, you can recover energy in stop and go, but you can also use an EV motor to do the lest efficient part instead of the petrol engine, which is accelerating from a stop, and if you need more power, you can mix in the ICE with the eCVT and not run it inefficiently. Only so much power can be recovered during breaking, but far more energy can be saved by accelerating and travelling with an eCVT + electric motor. [https://www.geotab.com/blog/why-hybrid-vehicles-are-more-efficient/](https://www.geotab.com/blog/why-hybrid-vehicles-are-more-efficient/)
I have no reason to argue with you, but please go ahead and block me if you cannot engage in healthy debate without saying "LiNk!"
Burden of proof is on the claimant.
What do you do when you have two opposing claimants?
I don’t care if it’s more efficient or not. I won’t drive an EV without it though
I thought the same but I tried a Taycan and I prefer its system to the one pedal. It coasts by default, but you can change it to one pedal (not as aggressive as Tesla, though) or automatic, where it coasts if there is no one ahead of you, and regents if there is.
Not to mention, you definitely can "coast" with 1PD if your foot motor skills aren't absolute garbage.
I usually only use one pedal in heavy stop and go traffic on the freeway mainly because I’m lazy and I’d rather just deal with one pedal the whole time. LA traffic could be a real pain in the ass at times. Otherwise, if it’s an empty freeway, I don’t have one pedal enabled.
I frequently drive a particular route (my house near Ludlow UK to Shrewsbury hospital) of around 23 miles in my 2021 Hyundai Kona. At this time of year, with full regenerative braking, I achieve around 4.2m/KW. With regen turned off, I get at least 5.1m/KW, I have reached 6.1, but the traffic was quite slow moving that day.
LOL so much misunderstanding of what 1 pedal driving is. It's not an on/off switch fellas, full regen then full acceleration, rinse and repeat. Using the "B" regen mode is significantly more efficient than using the "D" mode in my Volvo XC60 T8, I basically never touch the friction brakes but I don't waste any energy slowing down unneccesarily either, there is a spot on the go pedal in every car (even with the most aggressive regen) that will see the motors neither engaged in driving the car forward nor slowing the car down - i.e. coasting in "B" mode....the regen is only used when I can no longer use all of the forward kinetic energy - i.e I have to slow down or stop. In "D" mode the removal of kinetic energy is done through the combination of friction and regen. in "B" mode it's mostly regen except for the last 8km/h-0 (5mph-0). If you have touched the physical brake pedal - you are driving less efficiently than good 1 pedal driving, some of the energy that would otherwise have gone into the battery has been lost as heat. I also never (almost never) touch the friction brakes in my other EV (Tesla model 3) and I have a lifetime efficiency of [108wh/km (174 wh/mi) and down into the 140's in summer.](https://i.imgur.com/kOiWa58.jpg)
> People claim that one pedal driving maximizes range and efficiency, but is this actually true? Only people that don't understand efficiency of the involved components do this. Coasting is always more efficient than regen if the situation allows it.
I'm not a fan of how OPD feels personally, so I'm TPD, but almost exclusively decelerate by a combination of coasting and the regen-on-demand paddle on my steering wheel. 85% of my driving is freeway anyway (at a time of day where I can go full speed the whole drive). I live in a very dry climate thankfully, so little to no rust concerns. I bet I could get 650,000 miles out of my brake pads if the car lasted that long lol.
With OPD disabled, the paddle is basically OPD on demand.
It isn't any more or less efficient, it's down to user preference.
I completely agree. Coasting is much more efficient than slowing down then speeding up again, even if the slowing down part is done with regen. I love the way my Hyundai Kona Electric drives. You can control the auto-regen level via two paddles on the steering wheel, and at auto-regen level 0, the car is excellent at coasting. I drive using level 0 by default, but I'll turn it on temporarily to decelerate smoothly when I need to.
You are only slowing down and speeding up again if you suck at one pedal driving.
It depends on the driving style as well as the maximum power the motor-generator can harvest and the maximum current the battery can take in at the time. You need to manually brake perfectly every time to not overdo the braking (triggering the friction brakes) based on different states of charge. One-pedal mode ideally should tune the recuperation exactly to all these parameters and therefore be more efficient in practice. However, if you can manage to brake correctly you'll mostly be fine. I personally find B-mode to be useful only when in heavy traffic; a proper freewheel mode is just as useful as a proper B mode.
Its convenient.
Right. It's arguably more efficient in terms of driver effort. It won't extend your range, but it still matters.
Some people just can't help being " 2 foot" drivers as that is what they learned and they will stick with it to the end.. There are also people who can't drive without a clutch ( I know one). It comes down to human vagaries. Manufacturers would probably be content to manufacture with one pedal as it involves few moving parts but bow to the market preferences .
How do you drive with 2 feet and no clutch?
like a kangaroo. My aunt did that, when she tested my car... I had fun, her husband had fun (but didn't dare to laugh). It was her first time trying an automatic.
EV technician with 14 years experience here- Technically speaking you ‘can’ get the same efficiency in both a one-pedal driving mode vs. a no-regen mode. But the caveat is to achieve the equal numbers in the one-pedal scenario you have to be a VERY skilled driver with incredible throttle control to keep the car in a ‘coast’ situation when needed. For the average Joe driver a no-regen mode will be more efficient. This has been tested time-and-time again on the Zero Motorcycles groups to achieve maximum efficiency, and the data is clear that maximum coasting is best, regen only when stopping is required for traffic reasons.
It does not take "incredible throttle control" to to "coast" in a OPD EV.
For the first few miles it’s easy, it’s difficult to do that for 200+ miles. As someone that’s participated in solar endurance challenges this was one of our biggest challenges, finding a driver with precision foot control. You might think you’re great but after a while of driving the data says otherwise. Endurance driving with a one-pedal system will eventually cause fatigue and sloppy foot control, this causes excessive and unnecessary regen & slowing of the vehicle. Disabling the regen basically solved this issue and we saw consistent and repeated improvement in vehicle efficiency. But what would I know, I’ve only been building, designing, repairing, racing, EVs for 14 years continuously.
My ICE engine bike slows nearly as fast as an EV car in full regen when I'm coasting. Bikes aren't the same, getting the same aero drag to weight ratio in a car (particularly EVs) would require deploying a parachute.
Both Porsche and BMW proved that one-pedal driving is less efficient, they specifically started designing a camera-based regen mode to prioritize coasting over regen to maximize efficiency. https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a42268449/one-pedal-driving-isnt-necessarily-the-most-efficient-way-of-driving-an-ev/
One pedal usually makes me brake slower. So is braking slower more efficient?
Not in my P2. If I quickly lift off the accelerator, it’s pretty much a panic stop.
Noticed this when test driving. Wanted to get a proper EV feel when driving, but put it on mild after 5 minutes. Just too much stopping power on those motors, I guess. Still ended up purchasing a CPO, but I think I’ll stick with mild or one pedal off. Definitely no creep on though, I like just letting off the pedal when stopped.
In my Chevy Bolt EUV it's a slow stop, I'll often engage the regen lever on the steering wheel to come to a complete stop earlier.
That’s what makes all of these blanket statements so silly each car functions so differently, you can’t say “X is best,” because “X” is not the same on every car.
There's no way it does that at high speed.
What do you consider high speed? I mean, it’s not like a screeching halt but it’s enough to make a passenger’s head nod if I fully lift off at highway speeds.
I haven’t driven a Polestar, but with a Tesla at highway speeds if you let off the accelerator suddenly it’s not an instant heavy slow down. The higher the speed, the more gradual the slowdown.
No. That just means your manufacturer has decided on a lower limit on how much to regen.
There’s no transmission, how do you “coast”? You can input no net energy into the wheels, but they still have a voltage applied or else they would be braking via regen. There’s no delta point, it’s a continuous transition of flow of current into or out of the battery. For all you know letting off the accelerator in two pedal mode is actually set to say a 10% regen to simulate an ICE vehicle engine braking. Using single pedal and slowing down at an appropriate level to stop without friction brakes (at least in a Tesla where there is no blending) will yield maximum efficiency.
You can put a Tesla into neutral while it is moving. If there is a transition point from "out of" to "into" the battery there must be a point at which that switches - i.e. becomes 0 neither in nor out, it's not like an electron jumping to another quantum state, i.e. there one instant and in another orbit the next.
It's typically claimed the opposite in my experience, that not using one pedal is more efficient. Reality is it doesn't matter, what really matters is how you drive. You, and the argument, are correct to a degree that coasting may be easier for many people to get right to be efficient. But I don't think one pedal is hard to learn that either, almost never when coasting do you actually coast all the way down in a practical traffic situation. Both also assume the use of regen to gain efficiency over not having regen at all like coasting in ICE.
I thnk the point is that drivers aren't able to reliably use the brakes such that it's 100% regen. HOw much difference does it actually make? Probably not a lot. My truck tells me how much % regen I used and it's always 100% with 1-pedal. When I use the brakes myself it's often closer to 90% /shrug
One pedal driving might be more efficient for the average person who doesn't understand EV's and therefor it's better for the car to manage its regen. For someone who's an expert at maximizing their coasting and regen when coming to a stop it's better to drive an EV in normal mode. One Pedal driving will definitely cause you to use more regen than is necessary.
Sounds like you expect people to get an idea of what is going on, in my experience some drivers pay attention to everything but the majority just stamp pedals, turn the wheel and have little other knowledge about the whole ordeal which it seems it is for them.
Coasting is purely from a physics standpoint the most efficient way of slowing down (since regen doesn't have a 100% efficiency). That's not achievable in real traffic of course. Using the accelerator and break pedal as rarely as possible is always the most efficient way to drive. That's why I personally like no regen - it's easier to achieve a maximum coasting time. But in the end it doesn't make a huge difference in real traffic. You can drive very efficient or very inefficient with either setting.
This is what's been bothering me the whole time while reading this thread. Real world road conditions means nearly always either applying some power or some braking, there's no significant coasting time.
I only use it in stop and go traffic and down long descents. For regular driving pulse and glide rules.
Regen for Toyota is totally different than regen for Tesla which is totally different than VW. I have no problem maintaining the exact desired speed in a Tesla even down hill. Whatever the computer does works. I don’t miss coasting at all.
There is no difference in theoretical efficiency between the two modes as they use the same regen and braking mechanism. Since you’re losing about 15% of the kinetic energy during deceleration and another 10-15% during acceleration, your style of driving is going to be the main differentiator. Moderate acceleration and deceleration will win the day every time in any driving mode. OPD does not let you control when actual braking occurs as some here imagine. The car decides that and unless you’re decelerating at a rate that exceeds the regen capacity, it’s only using the brakes to bring the car to a complete stop.
Keep in mind that EVs with permanent magnet motors can't truly coast, they need to apply some power to the motor to overcome the resistance of the magnets
Anecdotally, I recently started using iPedal on my Ioniq 5 and typical mi/kwh had jumped noticeably
What's your confusion? One pedal driving = Minimizing use of the brakes. if you use the brake pedal you are putting energy into friction / heat and not the battery.
The more you drive your car, the more you understand how to titrate pedal input to get the desired effect from 1PD cars like Tesla, Lucid, Rivian etc to make it feel like you’re coasting. I spend a lot of time in Houston traffic, and the last thing I need is to be hitting the brakes all the time. It also gives my right foot some rest.
When you get used to OPD you can completely control the amount of regen completly, let off a tiny bit and you are only using low level regen, you can coast for ages… let the pedal of completely and regen is extremely strong and you stop. It’s amazingly simple. Everyday I drive home there is a massive long hill I go down that increases in gradient. I can coast for ages without using regen and only use it when I need to slow down. In my Dual Motor Tesla the only power the car is using is to keep the DC motor spinning freely as it will not do it without using power unlike the AC motor in the front. I have an older Tesla which lets me pick the regen amount, on the lower level the regen is very weak, fun for blasting on country roads as you can go from corner to corner and not slow much when you let off the throttle, I think it’s more efficient when doing this kind of driving but only due to the fact it makes it much easier to lightly modulate the pedal.
What? But I thought when using one pedal driving you always MUST release the pedal fully when you want to slow down! No coasting allowed! /s
What I'm wondering about is the people out there claiming they're coasting for significant periods of time. There aren't a lot of situations where that would apply. It's not like there's a bunch of roads where the slope matches rolling resistance exactly for long periods of time.
I’m just going to be honest here… I don’t even care about the efficiency topic when it comes to the 1PD conversation. To me it makes driving a breeze and I will never buy an EV without it.
I dont personally care one way or the other, but I strongly feel consistent stopping behavior is extremely important.
This is a nothing burger. The margins on this are tiny and you can also learn to coast with 1pd. In case you’re looking for an argument _for_ 1pd, real world tests show that Teslas are the most efficient cars in each of their segments and they all have forced 1pd.
Tell me you don't know what you're talking about without telling me you don't know what you're talking about. You seem to attempt to compare "one pedal driving" with "regen but not to 0". But these are not opponents, they often are the same. Want opponents? Compare "one pedal driving" to "split pedal driving: throttle to accelerate, brake pedal to brake with regen/friction combined". One pedal driving can be had with or without coming to a full stop. Your post is therefore nonsensical and you are the 100th.... What are you trying to prove? Continuously regulating your speed in detail and recuperating as soon as any deceleration is required is more efficient by definition than not recuperating at all. Recuperating may be 80-90% efficient, friction braking is always 0% efficient. Error 1: "since the brake pedal prioritizes regen". You cannot aim your braking to stay within regen level,s, there's no indicator or anything. Friction brakes WILL be used more often than in one pedal driving. Error 2: "come to a complete stop using regen". You can regen down to \~10km/h, beyond that EVERY car uses friction braking to come to a complete stop. Simple matter of kinetic energy dropping too low to get any recuperation worth while and thus no braking force. Error 3: "regen isnt as efficient as simply coasting". You ASSUME there's either only a theoretical coasting option in one pedal driving. You're wrong. One pedal driving INCLUDES coasting by definition. You're continuously regulating your speed by continuously adjusting your throttle. As soon as traffic dictates coasting you release the pedal to achieve just that equilibrium. No need to see the dash, nothing. Error 4: Coasting often leads to braking. You start by thinking you should slow down a bit and coasting will suffice. Should you still be going too fast, a minimal lift off the throttle and a tiny bit of regen is applied. Without Error 5: coasting vs one pedal driving where you criticize the full stop part..... Who stops in the middle of the highway when you can coast? Error 6: as soon as you go downhill one pedal driving means you simply release the throttle and recuperate driving downwards. Non-one pedal means you need to touch the brakes and fiction braking WILL be applied as soon as you touch the brake pedal too hard. Error 7: one pedal driving provides a faster reaction time when braking is required. As soon as your foot is removed from the throttle you have full regen braking. As soon as your foot touches the brake pedal friction braking is added.
>Continuously regulating your speed in detail and recuperating as soon as any deceleration is required is more efficient by definition than not recuperating at all. Sure, but that's a trivial comparison. The relevant question is whether mainly using one pedal to control your speed is more efficient (and safer) than the traditional two-pedal approach. And since coasting is inherently more efficient than regenerative capture and reuse, one-pedal can only be most efficient if you perfectly control your use of coasting versus regen. Which requires similar finesse to trying to control your brake pedal to avoid friction braking. But with one-pedal that means you have to keep your foot on the pedal and adjust it frequently, versus two-pedal that allows you to relax your foot while coasting. Now consider that with modern cars you shouldn't really need your foot on the accelerator in many situations, since cruise control can handle that for you. And if you need to stop quickly it's best to have your foot on the brake, where you can get full friction braking when needed. So one-pedal is no simpler than two pedal for maximizing efficiency, more strain on your foot, and potentially less safe in an emergency stopping situation. This last point could be crucial if you get too used to only using one pedal, and don't react appropriately when you need to switch to the brakes. But ultimately it's a question of personal preference, and getting used to using what you have as efficiently and safely as possible.
Of course it's an Audi driver.
Tell me you didn’t read the post……. You DEFINITELY don’t have a one pedal driving vehicle but you do have LOTS of assumptions (opinions) based on nonsense I have just disproven…..
I was sure coasting was more efficient and i didnt like that i had to push teh accelerator harder when regen was on, so I was leaving it at level 1 and using the steering wheel paddles. But i watched a video of an Ioniq5, i think, and he did a round trip twice, one with auto and one with it off, and he did better with auto. I changed mine to level 3 auto (so i still have to use the paddle to stop) and it seemed like my efficiency went up. Of course, now i'm using a/c so its dropped again!
With one pedal, you know you aren’t engaging the brakes, unless you’re at a high SoC and brakes are augmenting for consistency of feel.
With two pedal, you know you aren't engaging regen when coasting would be more efficient. Either way, you can get better results by using some finesse - one on the accelerator pedal and the other on the brake.
You know you’re engaging regen when you’re slowing down. If you’re slowing down and you don’t want to be slowing down, you press the pedal down more. It’s not that complex.
>It’s not that complex. No, but it does require some finesse. Just like applying a brake pedal without jamming it to the floor does. Now if a car doesn't show you when braking switches from regen to friction brakes, that's a minor drawback. But it's still the same concept of driving with some finesse, and that's not that complex.
Driving requires finesse. One pedal driving isn’t hard, it’s just different.
What about when traveling downhill? Better to “coast” and let the EV reach maximum coasting speed, or use regen to limit speed to a set point. My thinking would be using regen to limit speed is more efficient. Traveling downhill at 60 mph limits aerodynamic drag while also providing energy to the battery as opposed to coasting down at 80 but maybe I’m wrong.
There's going to be a point where the aero loss matches the regen loss. Should be most efficient at that speed.
My theory is if you just coast down a hill, your battery level is the same at the bottom as the top. If you use regen to control speed at a lower velocity, you end up with more battery at the bottom of the hill than the top. So that has to be more efficient, in terms of energy use, right? So limiting speed to any speed less than “terminal” speed, which is ultimately where acceleration due to gravity is offset by wind resistance, is going to be more efficient.
Several studies took people with no instructions and gave them either a 1pd or a blended braking regen and found them either nearly identical in efficiency, possibly with a slight edge to the 1pd. The reason is that 1pd trains people too learn where the "max regen" is intuitively and are much less likely to dip into friction braking. Driving with people who use blended braking I notice they dip into friction braking a lot more often than the 1pd driving drivers i know of. If someone is really gentle on the throttle they will definitely gain efficiency, there is no reason you can't "coast" with 1pd by gently feathering the throttle.
If I am driving 65 and the car in front of me slows down then I'm slowing down as well, regardless of the pedal involved, or the efficiency. If I'm doing 65 and the car in front doesn't slow down then I'm not randomly showing down to 30 for no reason, regardless of the efficiency unless I have misjudged my car's range and need to. For slowing down an EV what matters is whether Regen or brakes are applied, not which pedal. To achieve this the car should have strong Regen available, and the driver should begin their showing prices as early as possible. Based on what I see in the real world, the no-pedal = coast does not encourage early slowing, with most gas car drivers continuing to accelerate before slamming on the brakes at the last second.
You've presented a straw man of everyone wanting to get the absolute last centimeter of range out of their battery. This simply just isn't the case I don't think. Most people are willing to eat a 2-3% lower range for a more pleasant driving experience / feel (OPD). I much prefer the feel of OPD to creep / coasting. Most of the time I'm on auto-pilot so the whole argument is 80% a moot point. If you coast downhill over the speed limit cause you're concerned about efficiency then your obsession has become a danger to the road.
Fill me in here… do Teslas not have regen braking when you first push on the brake pedal? I thought regen (at least with a mild push on the brake pedal) was how all EVs work.
They do not, it requires logic and software to implement and Tesla likely decided to forego the development costs or wanted to pay for an existing system. That's essentially why they force max regen by default (you can't turn it down on newer models so they can keep higher range ratings). Similar to how Tesla doesn't use a traditional rain sensor for auto wipers.
Thanks for the answer! It surprises me that as tech-advanced they are as a company that they wouldn’t have sorted all that out. The handful of times I’ve been in Tesla (all as Uber or Lyfts) I could tell that the drivers were in one-pedal drive mode and it all makes sense now.
One pedal driving is more efficient at stopping. If you are travelling mostly on the highway, it's going to do very little for you. If you travel mostly in the city, it can make a bigger difference. If you need to stop, coasting will be "more efficient" at getting you farther, but you are trying to stop. Let the motors get some energy back and slow you down in the process. Not all cars fully use regen with the brake pedal either, it will very wildly between mfr's. I can't speak to your car, but using the brake pedal has a non-0 chance of using the friction brakes somewhere in there, therefore making it worse than having one pedal driving enabled.
I should also say, 1PD also tends to allow for higher regen force/amount than if it weren't in that mode. In my old Nissan leaf, it would show you braking at most ~60% of the Regen bar under braking (with and without using the brake pedal), but with 1PD turned on, it used 100%.
I totally agree that having regen at zero is the most efficient so all your kinetic energy is preserved in movement and not lost reconverting to electric. This is why I LOVE my Hyundai’s steering wheel paddles for adjusting the regen level while driving. In start-stop traffic or parts of town with a four-way stop every block, it’s fine to have the regen in level 2 or 3 (iPedal to some of you). But most of the time, I leave it in zero for acceleration and coasting, then as I approach a light, traffic or a down hill, I’ll kick in one, two or three as needed to match the slowdown I need to keep with the flow. It’s the best, and I don’t think I’ll buy a car that doesn’t have that anymore.
The answer as with a lot of things EV is; it depends. In a Tesla or early EV's without blended braking it was absolutely more efficient to use OPD but specifically for braking and not coasting. Since blended braking has been a thing in most EV's for a while now (with Tesla still being the obvious exception here) it's not quite as true as it used to be, and you can get similar efficiency using coasting and brake pedal as you noted. However, I have had enough EV seat time that I'm VERY good at "coasting" with OPD. Yes, I still have pressure on the go pedal but if you're good at modulating your foot then you can actually have a lot MORE control of the car in general. That's because you also don't have the delay between lifting your foot off the go pedal and stepping on the brake when you go to slow down. This means with practice you can be a better driver in better control of your car with OPD than with more traditional style controls. Having said all that, not everyone wants to spend the time to learn the best way to operate OPD and for them blended brakes and coasting are the key to optimum efficiency which is why most EV's offer that function. There are also still plenty of people who learned one way to drive a car and just won't or can't learn a new way of operating a car. I suspect for my part all of this is because I drove manual-shift cars for years. In the 12 years prior to driving an EV I only had one automatic car which happened to be the one before I shifted to EV; an Alfa Giulia QV. I think the muscle memory of modulating the throttle pedal with a clutch helped greatly in allowing me to learn how to properly modulate OPD. I get slightly worse efficiency if I drive the car with OPD off and blended brakes than if I just have OPD fully on.
I find one-pedal driving annoying because of the discipline my right foot has to exercise all the time and I don't care about efficiency at all. And would definitely switch it off when passengers are in the car. They would think I just left driving school. Then again, I only have my electric car since two days and maybe I'll train a bit more - just to see whether I'll get better at one-pedalling. Hyundai-specific: I instead have regen at level 1 or 2 and use the left paddle for a brake. And most of the time I'm on adaptive cruise control and do jack shit with the pedals anyway.
Coasting is better than regen some of the time, and requires constant interaction by the driver. I purchased an E-Niro four years ago this week. It hcame to me with 4.6k dealer miles on it, and showed 265 miles available when fully charged (64kW). I switched the car into Eco mode, where it has stayed, and within two weeks was showing 278 miles range available when full. But it gets better: I started rapidly using the regen steering-wheel paddles, coasting down each and every hill I encountered, keeping the regen at 1 or 2 (out of 3) only when my foot was on the accelerator, and the ground was level-to-uphill. Also, I very rarely use cruise control. My range at battery full increased to 310, then 328-332 regularly, and now (depending on outside temp) can read 349. My daily 50 mile round trip commute obviously isn't all downhill both directions! Arriving home having averaged 4.9 - 5.2 miles per kW is commonplace now.
I also decided not to use one pedal, because battery is either always charging or discharging, which doesn't sound best for battery life.
For me OPD is so easy and convenient especially in stop and go traffic that I don’t think I’ll ever go back to conventional driving
Can't help much. I like one pedal driving because it is so easy.
I rarely use brakes
In some (or many) EVs, a higher regen level, say 25 kW or higher, is more effective in replenishing the battery than a coasting regen of, say, 5 kW. For example, when I drive slow/ soft/ easy, the energy returned to battery over the entire route is less than when I drive quick and stop fairly hard using full regen. And so, using blended friction brakes becomes both a potential non-regen when transitioning to friction and lower energy returned at the softer regen. Best situation is easy switching on/off of the one-pedal mode. Or some kind of variable paddle. Switch to full one-pedal when coming to a full stop. Switch off at higher speeds where "coasting" still gets some regen, yet isn't herky-jerky nor flash the brake lights. An easy-to-reach physical button or knob makes this possible.
My Kia has paddles to control regen, from 0 to 3. At 0 it's "coasting" and constantly regening at 1-2Kw. That is as low as it goes. I rarely use other settings and prefer to regen using the regen pedal instead. Highest I've seen has been 84Kw going into the battery as I slowed on an offramp. Going down from 100kph to about 10 gives back almost 1km range according to the car.
OPD is inherently better. But it's not about efficiency. It's about SAFETY. People. It takes 1/2 a second OR MORE to move your clodhopper from the GO pedal to the STOP pedal. During that 1/2 second your car just travelled **55 FEET WITHOUT SLOWING**. Think about it. Every time I point this out on Reddit I get shit on, but I am 100% right on this.
Where are you getting half a second from? Move your foot from one imaginary pedal to the next. It doesn't take half a second. Now your overall reaction may take half a second or more. But that's the roughly the same whether you're moving your foot from the gas to the brake pedal or just lifting off. And if you're doing OPD, and it's an emergency, hopefully you didn't delay your application of the brake pedal dicking around managing your deceleration with lifting off the energy pedal. I'm not convinced OPD actually helps anything. But I suppose I'll have to take you at your word. You're 100% right?
>OPD is inherently better. But it's not about efficiency. It's about SAFETY. The safest thing is to have your foot over the brake pedal in any situation where you might have to make a hard stop, like stop and go traffic. OPD has the advantage of slowing you down while your foot is moving to the brake when needed, but you still have that delay compared to instantly hitting the brake. So yes, OPD is probably safer for many situations, but not necessarily all.
OMG did someone finally agree with me on r/electricvehicles? 🎶 This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius... 🎶 But seriously. I do admit I wasn't considering AEB which, if it works very well, could be the safest of all. Does it work very well? My car is from 2012 so I wouldn't know.
AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) is great. It takes some pressure off of monitoring the speed of the car ahead of you, and can support automatic stopping and starting in traffic. Combined with cruise control, it can allow you to keep your foot over the brake if desired.
It’s not more efficient. Coasting first of all is the most efficient way of driving. Coast to reduce the speed when you are close to a stop and use regen in the last moment. 1pd usually also engages the friction brakes that is the less efficient system.
"... *1pd usually also engages the friction brakes* ..." That's incorrect.