Electric Vehicles

It's not propaganda. It's a real problem with how some EVs are configured to aggressively apply regenerative braking even in the absence of driver input on the pedals.

I've been ranting at anyone who will listen that I hate "one pedal driving." It fundamentally breaks a long-standing driver control paradigm, that the throttle pedal accelerates the vehicle forward and that the brake pedal accelerates the vehicle backward (yeah yeah, we call it decelerate but still, it's acceleration). Pressing neither of those pedals makes the vehicle coast where any forward/backwards acceleration comes from air resistance, gravity on an incline, and rolling resistance of the vehicle itself.

One pedal driving tries to return the car to some kind of pre-Newtonian understanding of physics, where an object in motion still wants to stop.

And some drivers let off the throttle too abruptly, making for a terrible riding experience for the passengers when simply lifting the foot off the pedal makes for abrupt braking, with too high a jerk (rate of change of acceleration, or third derivative of position with respect to time). That's what makes people uncomfortable, especially passengers who can't mentally prepare themselves for changes in the driver's inputs.

I've driven and ridden in plenty of Teslas, and sometimes in the last 10 years they've defaulted to more aggressive one-pedal driving settings. When I test drove Polestars and Rivians, I couldn't tell if the sales offices configured one pedal driving or if that's the manufacturer's preferred default. Kias and Hyundais default to a lighter setting but it's still not the same as the typical ICE vehicle.

And frustratingly, Kias and Hyundais appear not to allow for regenerative braking on the brake pedal only. If you opt for smooth coasting, it doesn't regenerate even when you're using the brake pedal. It's a flawed UI/UX design.

This is a real problem, and EV manufacturers need to fix it. Give me normal cars that drive like normal and happen to have an EV drivetrain.