Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

I checked on lifetime average energy use because I wanted to compare real-world with the ratings. Last time I bothered to look, it was with just under 14k miles on the clock and the average was 260 Wh/mi. Now we're at about 30k and the average is at 255 Wh/mi. The EPA rating is 29 kWh/100 mi, or 290 Wh/mi. So that's pretty solid, we're outperforming the EPA rating by 13%. We're not hypermiling or doing anything purposeful to affect range, just using it like a normal car and making a lot of use of the climate preconditioning - which is quite possibly the most luxurious option I've ever come across in a vehicle. Getting into a warm car when you're coming out of the cold...ahhhhh.

A friend just picked up a new Model 3 Performance thanks to the recent Tesla price drop. He has a few things to say about the speed of the car, and since he's the sort of nerd who's inside the CAN system (he wrote CANdash) he was able to log actual power output. 557 hp! Good lord. I've never logged this in ours.

I just went through the first OTA update to the X5 PHEV last month. 
 

As opposed to the direct cellular connection used in the Tesla's, the update downloaded to my phone through a dedicated app, which was then used to update the vehicle. 
 

No significant UI changes. Most of the described feature updates had to do with updates to the lane departure warning implementation. 

Interesting conditions right now. We have extremely slippery roads right now - smooth ice covered in snow. And I'm not convinced the regeneration in one-pedal driving was allowing for minimum stopping distances. The car does almost all of its regen on the rear wheels, so when you're on surface streets in very slippery conditions the front regen isn't enough to add much meaningful decel. Meanwhile, the rears are modulating (very smoothly) to prevent lockup. Using the brake pedal seems to bring the front into full play, with lots of ABS action. The car supposedly does blended braking (regen + friction brakes) but it seems very subtle.

Did some testing on our cul de sac - the sun had warmed the pavement some, but I was still making fresh tracks. The test strip is downhill and I had a 20 mph entry speed. One stop with just regen, one with the friction brakes. Also tested on a section that was wet but clear. Definitely more braking action using regen on the clear road versus the snow, so I was pushing the limits of traction on the snow. On the snowy bit, the friction brakes were able to stop much shorter than regen alone. It almost felt like the one pedal driving was limiting any braking to what the tire with the least traction could handle, and the ABS was maximizing traction at each corner. It definitely felt like it was being much more aggressive at managing braking. Thinking about it, the regen can't really distribute braking force across an axle so this makes sense.

So our rule now is to use the brake pedal in very slippery conditions.

The traction and stability control of the car is fantastic, though. I expect this is an EV characteristic due to the rapid response of the motors, backed up by some good programming. It's a very sure-footed car, which is why the braking stood out.

Information like that makes you an excellent salesman for Tesla. Hopefully they will upgrade you to the plaid  with your courtesy car.   Smiley face 

(note: this was a response to a post with some valid points that seems to have disappeared)

Counterpoint: I feel that one-pedal driving makes you a smoother driver overall.

But you never forget the brake pedal is there, it's always there for when you need higher decel. I'm not sure how many people will totally forget to use it. I do still reach for the brake pedal occasionally when I need to stop a little quicker than the usually relaxed regen distance - friction brakes are always the shortest way to stop, the regen simply can't absorb that much energy. Not in the Tesla anyhow, there's a Mercedes (I think) that has some eye-popping regen capabilities. To me, having to use the brake pedal means I've failed to anticipate properly but I've never had a problem going for it if necessary - there's no mental override required.

What was interesting here when I think about it was that the relative regen/friction capabilities remained. It's like the regen scaled down as much as the overall traction did. I've got a couple of insider friends in Tesla (one is a chassis engineer), hopefully they might be able to help out. One mention was that the regen may not be able to cycle as fast as ABS to manage traction, so between that and the lack of side-to-side management it simply can't manage a lot of decel in low traction.

It's impossible to always give 100% consistent braking characteristics because sometimes the traction just isn't there. It is a good mental exercise to come up with how the car should have reacted here, though, and how much braking power it should have provided from the friction brakes. Should full regen braking always feel the same, regardless of surface and temp and battery level? Use the friction brakes to add enough decel so it matches an ideal conditions stopping level? Neither Janel nor I have any trouble dealing with the variations, but we also don't spend much time glued to the bumper of the car in front trying to do 60 mph in rush hour traffic.

Janel was the one who first came across the limited decel, driving home in the storm last night. She reported that she was trying to slow for an intersection and just lifted to let the car stop gently. It didn't slow much and took a long distance to stop, like I found in my testing. She didn't want to use the brakes because she didn't want to lock them, which of course the car wouldn't allow. She did stop in time, but that's because she allowed herself a lot of room.

She grew up in trucks without ABS and traction control and the like. That's a legit option in a 4WD without traction aids, I think, be smooth and let the engine braking do the work instead of dealing with a half drum/half disc system and threshold braking. Someone who's 10-15 years younger and hasn't driven a vehicle in slick conditions without ABS might have been more willing to just nail the pedal and let the ABS sort it out.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Apologies; I felt like I was bordering on a grouse that really didn't belong in your ownership thread. Sorry to bait you into a response and then vanish...

I think you have some quite valid points about scaled regen being a clue about conditions and about to what extent people are or aren't trained off the brake pedal. I remain unconvinced that it's a good idea until such time as it can be done as something of a standard (I feel like this is a much milder version of the period before cars settled on "accelerator on right, brake middle, clutch left if it has one.") Even as cars make driving easier and people effectively don't need to be as good at driving for a given level of safety, making the inputs change significantly from car A to car B is always going to result in some accidents, isn't it?

Are other EVs making the same decisions? Are there in fact standards being hashed out and I'm just (unsurprisingly) uninformed?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

And that's a very interesting example of getting maybe closer to having a problem than needed not because of being trained into one-pedal driving, but trained by much older cars that the pedal might be an issue.

Just watch out when it comes to taking you drivers test

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-teen-failed-driving-test-due-to-Tesla-16663709.php

Hands free driving has a down side?   In this case regen braking.   If in the limited traction case you mentioned is there any avoidance programing in the steering?  
  In other words a car In front spins out  and traction doesn't allow sufficient  stopping distance is there any programing for avoidance?  
  Please feel free to come up on our nicely frozen lakes and develop some.  I can imagine the algorithm now is not x option Y steer left option x steer right. 
  Ok I'll see myself out.  

In snowy Ohio I notice that the regen becomes nearly non-existent in the extreme cold.  This seems to change as the vehicle warms but is never as it is during ambient temperatures.  Just a thing to get used to.  I am completely spoiled by how fantastic a snow mobile it is after having put snows on it.  The other tires were extreme summers that don't like being frozen or I would have left them.

In reply to 84FSP :

That's the nature of a cold battery. It can't absorb the regenerated power quickly, so the amount of regen is limited. A recent software update triggers blended braking in that situation so it shouldn't be an issue anymore. 

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

I spoke to Janel about it. Her only other ABS experience is on a 2000 Grand Cherokee. She doesn't trust it and I suspect that it's probably fairly crude so she's not totally wrong. So the decision to stay clear of the pedal was very much informed by past experience and early 90's driver's ed. 

Hopefully Tuna will chime in to add what he's found in this situation with the Bolt. It would be interesting to know how other EVs deal with this, as I suspect the problem of managing traction with regen is a fundamental one.

In my BMW i3, if the car detects rear wheel slip while using regen, you lose regen rather suddenly for a split second, and the car feels like it switches into coast mode for a beat or two. It can be a bit jarring. Regen is also less powerful in sub-freezing temps and I notice myself applying the brakes more than in warmer months. I wonder if this is more pronounced on rear-drive EVs, as the rear wheels tend to lose traction more under deceleration?

The car also does not have full acceleration available if it is below, say, 10 degrees fahrenheit. My Nissan Leaf had the same behavior- less than full regen and acceleration until the battery warmed up. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Just a night or two ago it gave me a "Limited Deceleration" notice as well, separate from the "reduced performance" notice because of clod temps. I think it recognized the snow falling and elected to reduce aggression on regen for traction control concerns.

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

I don't think it's that serious, because other cars allow you to SERIOUSLY play with regen settings to get what you want. Mercedes and Nissan allow you to crank regen to maximum allowable which makes driving similar in feel to a giant rubber band you keep stretching and relaxing. I think Hyundai has a switch you can hit to activate regen on the steering wheel stalk. The Model 3 only has "Low" and "standard" regen settings. Point is, when you begin driving you're gonna pick what you feel is best, and (in my personal case) you know pretty quick when you're regen isn't as potent as before.

Actual information from the inside! This is interesting. I have learned today.

Regen traction control has to be very aggressive and fairly slow to return in very low mu conditions in order to favor stability

In cases of blended regen, it still reduces total deceleration request if it senses regen TC or ABS. You don’t want to have regen be at/past limit braking in normal function - if that is the case, when the driver hits the brakes they will not have any additional control available to them. This feels very bad from a driver perspective when we’ve tried it.

The regen TC and general stability control behavior should feel much better after the first slip/slide event of a drive that triggers it. There is mu learning that happens, and when you pull the car out of the garage it has no idea that the grip level is low until it senses some loss of traction. If you’re driving carefully this will make the first slip/slide feel worse than it will on subsequent slips/slides in the same drive. They should feel much less perceptible and better controlled.

So, pro tip, at the beginning of a snowy drive, just give it a good bit of throttle on the first acceleration to trigger traction control for a second or so. It will immediately switch to the more appropriate mu estimate

I tend to do that acceleration squirt when starting on a slippery drive anyhow so I can judge the surface, now I can tell Janel that it's the responsible thing to do!

I have a Model 3 as a rental this week.  I've got some time to kill so I've been customizing the controls...including renaming the car 

Interesting car so far.  I've had experience with a Y a couple years ago for work. So I'm not completely unfamiliar.  We'll see how it handles rental use.

Nice :) There are so many electicity jokes possible with Hertz as well.

I get in trouble when I make our car a crazy color for the display. Apparently we will not be wrapping our car neon green.

Keith Tanner said:

Hopefully Tuna will chime in to add what he's found in this situation with the Bolt. It would be interesting to know how other EVs deal with this, as I suspect the problem of managing traction with regen is a fundamental one.

Hello.

I neglected this thread for a while so I missed much of the discussion.

I charge the Bolt to 90% unless I am making a big trip. Because of that I start each day with full regen. Contrast that to starting the day with 100% charge, where the first half dozen stops are friction only, and within another half dozen it feels pretty much normal.

I always drive with one pedal. I almost never touch the brake pedal except when at a stop. I use the steering wheel paddle to add regen sometimes.

I have not noticed any difference with regen in cold or slippery conditions, though admittedly my climate isn't that slippery much. 

Does this answer the questions I missed? Honestly I wasn't sure what to expect with the Bolt. I had not test driven one, and I had leased a Leaf (1st generation) years earlier. I was coming off of the 5 speed Accord, and I also have an automatic Pacifica. I have basically the range of driving techniques with these three. It took me less than a day, with Tunawife behind me to watch the brake lights so I could understand how they work, to fully acclimate and use one pedal driving exclusively. If it got squirrelly during snow or something, I would easily turn it off. That hasn't happened yet.

Also last night I was driving home and saw an STI. I've always loved those. We weren't racing, exactly, but it's still faster than the Bolt. What a neato car.

We got a good answer from a Tesla chassis engineer about the change in behavior of the stability control and regen in slippery conditions. I suspect the Bolt is much the same, but you have to be in very low friction conditions to notice it. Took me until our fourth winter with the car to pick up on it, and it was in the sort of driving conditions where an old school driver would try to avoid the brake pedal completely. 

Keith Tanner said:

We got a good answer from a Tesla chassis engineer about the change in behavior of the stability control and regen in slippery conditions. I suspect the Bolt is much the same, but you have to be in very low friction conditions to notice it. Took me until our fourth winter with the car to pick up on it, and it was in the sort of driving conditions where an old school driver would try to avoid the brake pedal completely. 

Having driven through many a Syracuse winter in terrible cars, I know the tricks and they are engrained well. 

I am unlikely to see much of that here in SC. Perhaps I am not that useful of a data point.

Anyone know the BMW folks? They have a low friction test track and they are right around the corner. Maybe convince them to do a test for us with my Bolt.

I had one bad experience with regen and snow in a Volt and I made sure to pay more attention to the conditions after that.  There were a few inches of snow on the ground and I was driving on a downhill slope, when I lifted the car started to feed in regen which in turn was enough to start the front tires slipping on top of the low fricition surface - and pointing me sideways at a ditch.  I was expecting to lift off the throttle and freewheel like in an ICE car, but I quickly learned this was not the case.  Luckily my brain kicked in quickly and knocked the car into drive from low which is more or less a coasting situation.

In reply to Nitroracer (Forum Supporter) :

It basically acts like the engine brake on my diesel truck - fairly strong engine braking that takes a moment to start generating decel. Sounds like you were expecting more of an automatic transmission behavior :) Your experience illustrates why the Tesla works the way it does in slippery conditions, though. You want the regen to be conservative enough that it won't overpower the available traction.

I use regen to its fullest now, but this was years ago when I wasn't thinking of how the car would react in snow.   It was only doing what I had requested. I only needed that experience once!