Tesla & other EV's and hybrids are dangerous!

[Psi]

As an M3 driver I never understood why on various EVs the amount of regen is adjustable. Why would you want that if your right foot on the accelerator is all you need to control the amount of braking/regen?

Sorry to tell you, but that's because the regen on the Tesla Model 3 is inferior than the 1st gen Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius. On the majority of EVs and Hybrids, there are sensors to detect the travel of the foot brake. The deeper you press the brake pedal, the more regen the motors have. Friction brakes will only engage when the braking command exceeds the max regen. Adjusting the regen setting or activating one pedal driving does nothing to efficiency, it only changes the throttle pedal mapping. The Tesla Model 3 does not have this hardware, regen braking cannot be mapped on the brake pedal, earlier models did have regen options however use a lower setting reduces efficiency because regen power cannot be increased by the brake pedal. Later models removed the option entirely to make the EPA energy efficiency rating better.

Nothing to be sorry about; I never drove in either the Leaf or the Prius so I would not know their superiority 

What I do know is that in an M3 you hardly ever need to touch the brake pedal. Hardly ever means that I am really surprised if I need to use it. Usually only because something unexpected happens in front of me.

IIRC the M3 brakes/regenerates with a maximum of 70kW, depending on SOC and temperature. This 70kW of braking power is controlled with the accelerator. All the way up: maximum braking and regen, a bit down: less braking and less regen. In a couple of hours driving you learn when to let go of the pedal and how far to let go and from that moment on the brake is hardly ever used. @PSI: This (at least in our case) is also well understood and liked by my better half.

So, while the M3 might be called inferior for not having sensors in the brake pedal Tesla solved this entire problem by letting me have precise control of the amount of braking/regen without ever moving my foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal. As I always say, there is a lot of negative to be said about an M3, but its drive system is not one of them.

I also have not driven a Leaf or Prius, but have driven a M3 quite a bit. It seems really nice to me. I don't have any complaints about the regen.

[woody]

Yes, heavy regen tends to freak some people out. 

Also the driver behing you.
Not sure if it's still the case, but in the past many models did not engage the braking lights when regenerating

The 2019 M3 does light its brake lights whenever it decelerates beyond a point. I remember someone telling me that in the EU this is mandatory in any car, EV or ICE, since a couple of years although I could not find a confirmation of that.

Initially I was no fan of this feature as it makes for a lot of useless brake light flashing, e.g. when drivers lift their foot from the accelerator only a little to make a bit of room for a merging vehicle. These flashing brake lights invite real braking further down the road, which might lead to accidents. I remember my driving instructor explaining to me that in principle you do not brake on a highway, unless there is something to brake for. You anticipate and slow down in time. But yeah, that was a long time ago and in 2026, with all of us in a hurry, driving on busy roads with one eye on our smartphones and our brains occupied elsewhere, I guess we need all the help we can get

[Siwastaja]

It's interesting how car manufacturers struggle with things that seem obvious to get right.

Some Korean BS EV - don't remember which exactly - specifically drives me mad. Constant, aggressive brake light flashing for absolutely no reason whatsoever, in normal highway traffic. So the engineers read "EU mandates brake lights for motor braking" and wrote code if(torque < 0) light_up_brake_lights();. Owner coasts a very slight 1-degree downhill and it hits 0.001 kilowatts into the regen side and panic light ensues, signalling to others we need to slow down. Give me a break. EVs have existed forever. Nissan for example had never any problem with this. Brake lights light up with significant regen torque, something equivalent of maybe 10-25kW or so braking power depending on speed.

Then there was this Opel Ampera which honks on its own without a reason. Very nice during nighttime. That's also regulated by law, actually; the owner is responsible for car doing illegal things.

I wish there was an official hotline for reporting misbehaving cars, and a quick process to fix bugs. It's not owner's fault that car designer smoked something.

Re regen: Leaf regens strongly enough (up to 35kW) if battery is warm and not too full until complete stop in one-pedal model, but it does automatically use mechanical brakes too and it's hard to quantify exactly how much. In normal driving mode, the regen annoyingly starts to ramp down already around 20km/h or so. Actual brake pedal increases the regen, though. I would still prefer it to regen a bit more at low speeds especially; but don't want to use the one-pedal mode as it teaches wrong behavioral patterns, specifically one can accidentally forget the car on Drive and accidentally hit the pedal too easily.

[Psi]

It's interesting how car manufacturers struggle with things that seem obvious to get right.

That's usually caused by executives and upper management who feel powerful when they make big company decisions, and also 'group think' plays a roll. They are to detached from reality and from the people who actually use the products they sell.  So their decisions are usually wrong or suboptimal. They back up their decisions with interpretations of 3rd party data, so when they're wrong they can point at the data being at fault and so don't get fired.

[woody]

It's interesting how car manufacturers struggle with things that seem obvious to get right.

That's usually caused by executives and upper management who feel powerful when they make big company decisions, and also 'group think' plays a roll. They are to detached from reality and from the people who actually use the products they sell.  So their decisions are usually wrong or suboptimal. They back up their decisions with interpretations of 3rd party data, so when they're wrong they can point at the data being at fault and so don't get fired.

On the bright side, they can be nudged in the right direction: VW decided to bring back physical buttons for key controls, starting with their ID2 platform. By user demand and NCAP requirement. You hear that, Tesla?

[Siwastaja]

The core reason why still significant % of people are unwilling to use EV is that EVs are crap, and they are not crap because they are EVs, also not crap due to range or charging power anymore, now they are crap because they are some toy projects of the executives Psi mentioned above, not serious cars designed for actual use for normal laymen who just want a low-effort simple car to move from place A to place B repeatedly and for many years.

There is no excuse for this bullcrap. Nissan designed a production-ready, real EV that behaves and functions like a normal car, in 2011. All you need to do is to do the same but with modern-day battery tech (as generic term including cells but also thermal management etc.). That is low level design work like battery chemistry, cooling/heating pipe design etc. etc., nothing special.

Instead, most EVs are designed on the terms of "maximize cost, maximize complexity, minimize reliability, minimize familiarity", and that's all fine when you are a Silicon Valley startup and want to sell to early adopters, but not fine if you are seriously going to revolutionize the world and get good market share. So we primarily got dangerous door handles that kill you, dangerous touch screen only controls that kill you and the others, and secondarily, as a side effect, decent EV performance (range, battery heating etc).

I'm extremely happy with the Nissan Leaf. Zero enshittification and zero bullcrap. The only issue, admittedly a seriously big one, is that it totally sucks in the modern-day EV performance metrics - range, lack of battery heating and cooling, slow quick charge. Oh well. I take that rather than a crap car designed to cause erection to car journalists but then blinks brake lights randomly and spends half of the first 2 years at repair shop because it was shipped as an unfinished hobby project rather than real mass production car. I simply cannot choose between car "booting" for 5 minutes, or consuming 700W of power all the time, like "modern" Chinese-"Swedish" crap does. So I have to rely on the third option, move your business elsewhere. To me, it is essential that basics work, and it's unbelievable this is still the achilles heel of EVs in freaking 2026. I was much more optimistic in 2012 when it looked like Tesla is getting the EV performance right, and Nissan is getting the "normal car" aspect right, that someone comes and combines these two. But nope.

[temperance]

Here in Belgium, I've counted till now six accidents with EV's caused by people who underestimate the acceleration power of those cars. When asked, those people all report the same in the news: all of a sudden the car speed forward. Those six cases were the extreme cases reported in the news. The real number must be much higher.

Driving on the highway, some drivers use the enormous torque of their EV's to weaponize their cars by quickly overtaking on the wrong side and slamming their cars back into the lane they came from. Those are all new cars and the owners have comprehensive insurance (If that's what they call that in English) so they don't mind trashing a car.

[woody]

The core reason why still significant % of people are unwilling to use EV is that EVs are crap, .....

I agree with the sentiment. It is hard to believe that grown-up car companies like Toyota, VW, BMW and the like would not be able to produce a normal, affordable, fully functional car with an electromotor instead of an ICE inside. They had the car-technology, they had the money to do the research to make the switch happen and they had the market penetration that is needed to make it a success. But no, due to some hard to understand force all cards keep being set on ICE. Ah well, if fuel prizes remain what they are today maybe a Hindenburg moment will happen. I won't hold my breath though.

[AVGresponding]

Here in Belgium, I've counted till now six accidents with EV's caused by people who underestimate the acceleration power of those cars. When asked, those people all report the same in the news: all of a sudden the car speed forward. Those six cases were the extreme cases reported in the news. The real number must be much higher.

Driving on the highway, some drivers use the enormous torque of their EV's to weaponize their cars by quickly overtaking on the wrong side and slamming their cars back into the lane they came from. Those are all new cars and the owners have comprehensive insurance (If that's what they call that in English) so they don't mind trashing a car.

They'll mind when their insurance provider refuses to pay out based on the car's telemetry data and/or the dashcam footage.

[PlainName]

the owners have comprehensive insurance (If that's what they call that in English) so they don't mind trashing a car

They will do once they've had a claim: even if it wasn't their fault their future premiums will be higher.

[woody]

Here in Belgium, I've counted till now six accidents with EV's caused by people who underestimate the acceleration power of those cars. When asked, those people all report the same in the news: all of a sudden the car speed forward. Those six cases were the extreme cases reported in the news. The real number must be much higher.

Yes, the near instantaneous torque of an EV is absolutely something to recon with. But this is not limited to EV's. One could argue why cars, ICE as well as EV, would need to have shitloads of horsepower and torque while they are used on roads that mostly have a 100-130km/h speed limit. But it seems that horsepower and torque are very strong sales arguments. So now cars, from the smallest Polo to the largest Beemer can be had with more HP/kg than you would ever need. And with any of these you can underestimate the acceleration. But in the end it is your right foot controlling that acceleration.

[rstofer]

An ICE will have maximum torque at some high RPM. Coming off the line, it takes time to get the full torque to the pavement.  Hence spinning the tires.  The EV has maximum torque at 0 RPM, right off the line.  Don't drag race an EV with an ICE - it will be embarrassing.

Top speed is a HP thing and clearly there are ICE vehicles that will move right along.

We should build high performance cars and ban low performance drivers.  Driving is a lot more fun with a bit of oversteer.

[tom66]

EV's actually have weaker torque than ICE car at speed due to lack of a multi-speed gearbox.  An ICE car with similar weight and 200hp engine will have better acceleration at 60+ mph than most EVs with same power because of torque weakening effects.  You end up needing a more powerful motor to compensate, which is why Tesla start fitting things like 500hp motors (total power) to Model 3, to make the high end motor power feel better.  The ICE car will downshift to 3rd gear (or driver will) giving a better torque advantage.

So the problem is not torque but power, and the majority of EVs do not have that much power.  ID.3 for instance and Polestar 2 that I drive are very average cars in their class and they have around 200-220hp, this is not unusual for many midrange ICE cars (Golf TSI 1.5 for instance has 148hp but weighs 20% less than ID.3, so power to weight ratio is quite similar.) 

EVs do have excellent torque from zero which makes for good traffic light grand prix where you can merge in front of other traffic, for instance with a short overtaking lane.  Also good for acceleration onto sliproads to merge on highways.  But use such power must be used responsibly.

[Siwastaja]

"Performance" / torque / horsepower thing is red herring if you compare the similar price class. People who either have the money, or want to be in deep debt, equally buy powerful ICE cars and EVs, and equally smash them and others. Manual transmissions limit that kind of abuse, but they are getting rarer especially in the price class we are discussing. It is increasingly usual for "normal" average Joes and Janes, not just car enthusiasts, to buy powerful cars, mostly SUVs.

[temperance]

It is increasingly usual for "normal" average Joes and Janes, not just car enthusiasts, to buy powerful cars, mostly SUVs.

That is the problem. Many of those EV's have the ability to go from 0...100 km/h in less than 3.5 s. A tesla in 2.4. That's about as fast as modern F1 car and faster than an F1 car from twenty years ago. That's just crazy.

Meanwhile, the EU is pushing green cars with local governments subsidising those weapons.

[NiHaoMike]

What I do know is that in an M3 you hardly ever need to touch the brake pedal. Hardly ever means that I am really surprised if I need to use it. Usually only because something unexpected happens in front of me.

Might that be the main reason for the safety complaint? That drivers stop getting used to the brake pedal and end up with a slower response to use it?

I think the solution would be to design the brake pedal with a substantial initial dead zone, with a sensor to detect movement in that zone. Map it so that it goes to max regen near the end of that dead zone.

[Psi]

The core reason why still significant % of people are unwilling to use EV is that EVs are crap, .....

I agree with the sentiment. It is hard to believe that grown-up car companies like Toyota, VW, BMW and the like would not be able to produce a normal, affordable, fully functional car with an electromotor instead of an ICE inside. They had the car-technology, they had the money to do the research to make the switch happen and they had the market penetration that is needed to make it a success. But no, due to some hard to understand force all cards keep being set on ICE. Ah well, if fuel prizes remain what they are today maybe a Hindenburg moment will happen. I won't hold my breath though.

At first the existing car companies didn't know what they were doing. They had never made an EV before, so they made lots of mistakes. Understandable.
Tesla came along first with an extreme high performance car with lots of new features and tech never seen before. Not just an EV but a ground up rethink, which made sense, Tesla being a new company. 

The problem happened when the other car companies decided the pathway to win was to copy/out-do Tesla and push them out, instead of accepting Tesla had grabbed a chunk of market and finding their own market that Tesla wasn't covering. There was/is plenty of people who wanted an EV but not a Tesla.
They assumed they could win Tesla buyers back by making a Tesla'ish EV themselves. Which is possible but not when using their existing and slow management style.

Say what you want about Tesla/Elon but the person and the company like to push boundaries and try radically new things. Which is great, it's good to have those options and they push things forward, but when other companies try to copy this bleeding edge approach without also having the internal company structure needed things fall apart quickly.
Tesla has very engineer-heavy management and leadership style so they tend not to fall into the same traps as typical companies where the managers and executives have little to no engineering knowledge or mindset but try to drive bleeding edge engineering innovation.

The next thing the big car companies have to deal with is simple, cheap and reasonable EVs coming out of china.
If they can't compete on price they will lose the worldwide market. Countries that have tariffs on china EV imports may mean they can only make a profit selling their cars locally.
Another issue they have is they make a lot of their money selling replacement parts, and EVs tend to have a lot less to go wrong so that cuts into their profits. There's still car accidents so it's not a massive reduction, but they are operating with low margins anyway and most are in debt.

[thm_w]

As an M3 driver I never understood why on various EVs the amount of regen is adjustable. Why would you want that if your right foot on the accelerator is all you need to control the amount of braking/regen?

I wouldn't mind slightly heavier regen at low speeds, OR regen that scaled up based on how close you were to the vehicle in front of you. But its definitely very good as it is.

Nothing to be sorry about; I never drove in either the Leaf or the Prius so I would not know their superiority 

Nissan leaf regen and braking at low speeds is rough, I don't know what they are talking about. Maybe its superior in concept but in execution it just feels bad. https://www.speakev.com/threads/brake-pedal-goes-to-the-floor.14149/

Re regen: Leaf regens strongly enough (up to 35kW) if battery is warm and not too full until complete stop in one-pedal model, but it does automatically use mechanical brakes too and it's hard to quantify exactly how much. In normal driving mode, the regen annoyingly starts to ramp down already around 20km/h or so. Actual brake pedal increases the regen, though. I would still prefer it to regen a bit more at low speeds especially; but don't want to use the one-pedal mode as it teaches wrong behavioral patterns, specifically one can accidentally forget the car on Drive and accidentally hit the pedal too easily.

I agree with what you are saying, and studies do as well, but you can still form safer habits. Either move your foot to the brake pedal when you have stopped, or move it somewhere else away from any pedal.
Ideally sensors would just stop you from accelerating into a stationary object at all, or at a red light, but that only seems to work at high speeds.

[default0.0player]

Telemetry is cancer, remove it from EV (or ICE)

[woody]

It is increasingly usual for "normal" average Joes and Janes, not just car enthusiasts, to buy powerful cars, mostly SUVs.

That is the problem. Many of those EV's have the ability to go from 0...100 km/h in less than 3.5 s. A tesla in 2.4. That's about as fast as modern F1 car and faster than an F1 car from twenty years ago. That's just crazy.

I fully agree with the 'just crazy', however, this is not isolated to EV's. Looking at this list 12 of the ~70 cars listed are EV, the rest are ICE or Hybrid. The fastest three are EV, but specifically built for the task.

EV's are easily faster than ICE and this aspect was used (mainly by Tesla) to get them on the map and out of golf cart territory. We want fast cars. We buy them. We refuse to set 'chill mode' and then we drive them into things. If we do not want that we need to set rules, not complain about the technology.

Meanwhile, the EU is pushing green cars with local governments subsidising those weapons.

Although offtopic I would argue that subsidizing EV's is a sound policy, taking into account that using electricity for road transport makes far more sense than (also heavily subsidized) fossil fuel.

[Psi]

Telemetry is cancer, remove it from EV (or ICE)

I'm happy with Telemetry if I'm the only one getting the data and I have options who to sell it too for $

[woody]

Another issue they have is they make a lot of their money selling replacement parts, and EVs tend to have a lot less to go wrong so that cuts into their profits. There's still car accidents so it's not a massive reduction, but they are operating with low margins anyway and most are in debt.

Certainly. Also, selling cars online and not having to change fluids every 25k is going to hit old-auto's dealer networks pretty hard, which makes for a lot of resistance.

[Psi]

Another issue they have is they make a lot of their money selling replacement parts, and EVs tend to have a lot less to go wrong so that cuts into their profits. There's still car accidents so it's not a massive reduction, but they are operating with low margins anyway and most are in debt.

Certainly. Also, selling cars online and not having to change fluids every 25k is going to hit old-auto's dealer networks pretty hard, which makes for a lot of resistance.

yep.  Actually thinking about it more, even the replacement parts needed for car accident repairs aren't safe. Self-drive cars will reduce the number of accidents.

Switching from ICE cars driven by people to an increasing % of EV driven by AI is going to have a bigger effect on a wider range of industries than people think.

[PlainName]

Self-drive cars will reduce the number of accidents

Going by the complaints of modern cars swerving into oncoming traffic (auto lane follower or something), remove the human who is quickly righting things and there would be more accidents. And not just minor scratches.

[tom66]

The thing to understand about ICE car manufacturing is that conventional manufacturers typically made:
- Engine
- Chassis and body panels (usually including interior plastics)
- Sometimes the gearbox (usually home-grown if manual, usually 3rd party if automatic)

Basically everything else? That's just bought in.  Airbag module & airbags, seatbelts, ECU, BCU, ADAS, infotainment, suspension parts, steering components, brakes, etc.  All produced by other industries.

EVs really change things up.  Manufacturers now need to get good at making batteries, since batteries are the "engine".  That sounds like an odd thing to say because of course batteries do not move, but they are the critical component to electromobility.  Motors are well understood and inverters/motors are about as efficient as they will ever be (e.g. the Tesla Model 3 small motor is 90% efficient under light load, it's quite hard to beat that.)   But a battery defines weight, packaging, charging speed, manufacturing cost (25-50% of the car's cost), lifespan and efficiency.   

The other thing is, and it's not exclusive to EVs, but the transition to EVs has happened at the same time that vehicles have become a lot more software-defined.  For better or worse many consumers demand these modern features (although there has been noticeable pushback over touchscreens and LKAS, the majority of features have been accepted and sometimes even demanded.)   To do software well in cars, you really need control over the whole package.  Companies like Tesla make a great deal of their modules now, which allows them to do very clever things like software updates that fix issues that would otherwise be recall-worthy, improve the drivetrain and fix bugs.  This gives them an edge over conventional manufacturers that are still testing the product.  Of course you could argue it is not so great to be a first adopter of any car model now, given you end up as a guinea pig until the software issues are fixed (looking at you VW with your useless ID software...)

ICE manufacturers have struggled with this transition.  I'd argue some of them have done better than others:  VW has built battery factories, and plans to make its own cells by 2028.  Ford has struggled, making an overly-complex Mach-E powertrain, and having to get in bed with VW to deliver cars to EU mandates.  Honda have bought in Chinese EVs instead.  Nissan have done fairly well with their Leaf, but have been slow to deliver other options, which allowed other manufacturers to catch up to their lead.  Tesla have oddly fallen behind, offering an ageing fleet and failing to match consumer demand for multiple models, and also a really ugly truck and Elon shenanigans (whether or not you agree with them) didn't help either.