Does the Traffic Aware Cruise Control wear on your brakes?

[erickulcyk]

So I read somewhere that the TACC isn't the best about smoothly using your regenerative braking, but instead will use your actual brakes by decelerating too fast. Is this true? I'm waiting for mine to be delivered, but I'm not sure if I should use TACC sparingly or not.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[robby]

It's improved a lot since its inception. In normal circumstances with the latest firmware, regen provides much more braking power than TACC requires; it rarely pushes past 60 kWh, let alone needs disc brakes. From an efficiency standpoint, you can do better by hand than what TACC does, but if you're not trying to hypermile, I doubt it'd make much difference.

Hard/disc braking with TACC mostly occurs in situations where speed changes quickly. For instance, if you're in stop and go traffic, then it speeds up to 40 briefly, then stops again, TACC will accelerate hard and brake hard to react to traffic. A human might better see the larger context of the road, and allow more space to accumulate in front knowing things will slow down ahead and the gap will close.

 

[Ames]

The spaciousness of the Model S combined with the Autopilot feature certainly presents new opportunities for things to do while driving. I would imagine that while performing your breaks, head spins in particular would present a problem as it would likely result in the destruction of your rear view mirror and premature wear of the center console, and if the car suddenly engages emergency braking there's no telling what position you'd end up in.
Welcome to the forum

 

[Chipper]

It has not affected my breaks at all. I take one whenever I feel like it. :tongue:

So I read somewhere that the TACC isn't the best about smoothly using your regenerative braking, but instead will use your actual brakes by decelerating too fast. Is this true? I'm waiting for mine to be delivered, but I'm not sure if I should use TACC sparingly or not.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[electrish]

I use TACC a lot during my commute to and from work and have noticed that my rotors are rusty.
So I assume that TACC doesn't overly use the breaks, but rather mostly relies on regen.
But I agree that it sometimes is choppy and that one could probably do better hypermiling pedally.

 

[CHG-ON]

My car brakes much harder than I would without TACC and using regen. So I think it does use the brakes much more. Not so much on the highway. But certainly in my rural road driving while following cars.