Mr. Musk (peace be upon you, SIR) it is with a heavy heart I must report the airbags failed and killed my wife, SIR, but rest assured my love for you and TESLA will never die unlike my nagging wife.
Wait so the braking force applied by the regen decreases if the vehicle gets hot?
Isn't that extremely dangerous? Imagine while driving normally, you know that the car will slow down at a certain rate if you lift the throttle. Now that rate of deacceleration while off throttle changes depending on the temperature of the vehicle. That kind of inconsistency leads to accidents, as shown here.
Interestingly enough, hydraulic brakes will also stop working the same way when the temperature of the fluid reaches the boiling point, which reduces the braking pressure significantly. Not a problem in most consumer vehicles in most situations, though. I'm assuming that the regenerative braking is either on or off, and might change quickly. It would be ideal if the mechanical brakes phased in as the regenerative braking phased out - I wonder if that's what they intended to do here, but didn't get it working?
The car's computer should phase in the mechanical disc brakes as the regen braking force decreases to maintain a consistent deacceleration rate while off throttle or braking.
Even in my fake stormworks designs, I have a separate battery/capacitor specifically for regenerative braking that gently bleeds back into the system. Also the regen brakes have their own separate clutch, but that's because I couldn't figure out how to do it otherwise
I saw a couple of these while I was driving down a precarious mountain road yesterday, good to know that the driver could have lost control at literally any point and plowed into me.
Holy shit I brought back a rental once because it applied the brakes when I didn't want it to I can't imagine a car thinking it's smarter than the driver and overriding his input to brake.
The car I drive right now does this. There's a way to turn it off but I haven't figured it out. It's my family member's car and she hates that feature too so she turned it off before, but it somehow got turned back on and we can't figure it out anymore
It also brakes at completely random times. Approaching a stopped car, wall, much slower car, etc? Nothing. On a completely empty road except there's a car not in my lane but in the turn lane which is turning off to a different street? Slam the brakes. Make it make sense
Hybrids/full electrics aren't the best, but from a pure consoomer point of view, I have no idea why anyone would pick a Tesla. I have a 8 year old hybrid Volt. I was warned if I go north, the battery might suck. I still get nearly 40 miles of electric drive when its cold. It handles snow and ice pretty well. My dad (somewhat of a car freak) commented on how smooth and surprisingly powerful it is.
I have problems with it, but they're minor vs losing all braking power. And thats for a discontinued, out of date, middle of the road hybrid.
In North America, only Teslas are viable if you're ever going to leave your city, because Teslas have the Tesla Supercharger network while other EVs have to deal with the hell that is Electrify America.
In other words: the Tesla Supercharger network is the killer feature of Teslas.
Note that this is changing as other auto manufacturers are adopting Tesla's formerly proprietary NACS (SAE J3400) charging standard, opening up the Tesla Supercharger network to non-Tesla EVs.
My truck shot my wife in the neck and launched a dozen photon torpedoes at the hospital I was staying in for the broken neck it gave me when the brakes failed. Still love the truck tho