EV Hard acceleration on rear facing infant necks

[davidew98]

I had a 2020 Hyundai Kona EV, have a 2013 Toyota RAV4 EV, & will be getting my 2022 Tesla Model Y in about a week. I have a 20 month old toddler and wife is pregnant again. my toddler is on the small side so she'll be rear facing for a while and the new baby will be rear facing too. Toddler's infant years were spent in a Kona EV and I was scared to accelerate hard. Every once in a while I'd forget and look back and see her neck go forward, I was YIKES and felt terrible!

I've tried googling for any studies or doctors discussing the issue and nothing comes up remotely close. I get articles about power wheels when looking up babies and electric cars, ugg! I know some people say just the swinging motion of a baby swing can cause neck injuries!

Car seats are rear facing to prevent the babies head from flying forward in a frontal collision. but with a seat facing rearward the childs head will whip forward.

I'm NOT looking for hearsay or public assumptions. I understand all the different thoughts about this subject. I ONLY want any info people might have found in reference to any kind of studies OR doctors commenting on the subject!

Keep it factorial!
PLEASE PROVIDE REFERENCES!

 

[davidew98]

Giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming it's a genuine inquiry, I think the misunderstanding is that OP is under the impression the instant torque of an EV makes for every start being a hard abrupt starts. The accelerator pedal of an EV works just the same though, you might have to learn what touch is right for you but otherwise you can ease into a start just as easily in an EV as you'd like.

I’m very aware of that but like I said the damn kona pedal was way to aggressive. My mode y is a lot better in chill mode!

 

[davidew98]

I'm not aware of any studies done, but the physics suggest that it's not that bad. Even a car accelerating as quickly as 3 seconds from 0-60 is only accelerating at about 1g -- the amount of force you normally feel standing or sitting. The net g-force including gravity would be about 1.5gs.

If you've ever tossed your toddler into the air and caught her, it's likely she's experienced higher g forces than that, though you usually handle it better when you expect it.

Still, for the sake of comfort alone, keep the car in chill mode and everything will be fine.

Thank you for the very detailed educated answer. Never thought about it this way and great thoughts! And to add to it accidents are a lot more gs too! The most stupid thing is when I came across crap about swings being bad for infants!

 

[davidew98]

How do you forget that you have your baby in the car?

I am going to split my vote between two posts:

@wk057 , that this is made-up nonsense anti-EV bull&%^#.
or
@redalf , that someone thinks the accelerators on electric cars are a toggle switch between MAXIMUM/OFF, with no scale to them.

From this post I don’t have to think about how much you assume! You prove it!

It helps to read posts before assuming! There are a lot of great responses and this wasn’t one of them!

 

[davidew98]

@Rocky_H To be fair, the standard accelerator mapping on my M3P is way overly aggressive, it just takes a tiny fraction of pedal travel to get big power. A very inopportune cough or reflex or such probably could send the car accelerating too quickly. That's different than the OP's issue of driver forgetfulness though.

Plenty of ICE cars have stupid gimmicky aggressive throttle mappings too though, it's by no means just a Tesla thing. And some Teslas are better, e.g. our S P85 isn't nearly so jumpy on the accelerator.

On my last couple ICE cars it was easy to remap the drive-by-wire throttle however you liked using ECU tuning tools. Unfortunately I haven't come across any such thing for a modern S3XY Tesla. Would be really sweet if Tesla made custom accelerator maps a built-in feature, taking advantage of the big touchscreen!

Great thoughts but chill is good!

 

[davidew98]

You're not missing much. Chill mode is bland... You can achieve exactly the same thing by pressing less on the accelerator, which has a very reasonable mapping, at least on my acceleration boost awd 3.

Chill mode limits power to around 200hp as seen on some dyno tests. You can press as hard as you want, the other 200+ horses are not answering

Chill mode is bland and that’s what I want! I didn’t put the 200 extra horses to bed I put them out to the pasture and will likely never see them again… unless I show off which I’m not that kind of person! Love my chill mode!!

 

[father_of_6]

someone thinks the accelerators on electric cars are a toggle switch between MAXIMUM/OFF, with no scale to them.

Count me in *this* camp ... green light, gotta go!