ICE vehicles loose their efficiency over time too. So a full tank on a new ICE may be EPA 400 miles but EPA 380 miles once the car is 5 years odd. Still when you fill it up you get 100% of the available range. So knowing the battery degradation is not useful other than just the knowledge of knowing. So if it shows 100% or EPA miles available they ARE the same. Example 206 miles (degraded from 210) is 100%, 103 is 50% and 52 is 25%. While we all want to believe that the choice we made MUST be the right one, using percentage is NOT wrong. It is just a different way of looking at the same info.
Huh?
How is knowing the battery degradation not useful? If my device says it will last “300 minutes” or “300 miles” when it’s new and X years later it says it will last “200 miles” or “200 minutes” I think that is pretty useful. Much more useful than seeing it say “100%” and not knowing what that translates to in terms of usage. It means I know if I can likely make my destination without charging or not.
If you borrowed a car that showed you only %, that would be nearly useless. % is only meaningful when you know what “100%” means, and how do you find out what 100% means? By switching to miles or kilometres. Case closed. LOL. Seriously.
I can drive my car for the life of the car and never once look at “%”, without any loss of utility. I will always have a good gauge of how much real world distance I have remaining ... from the gauge, that reads “miles”.
If you drive your car for the life of the car only ever using “%” and never look at “miles” you won’t know how much absolute energy you actually have in the car
You won’t know if “50%” will get you to your destination just by glancing at the gauge. You would always have to use the navigation to make that judgement call. Maybe at some future date you’d wonder, “why does it seem to take more % to reach my destination than before?” Hmmm.
I wouldn’t compare to an ICE car. A gas gauge is pretty useless except to tell you when you are near E. It takes minutes to refill and range isn’t a major concern. “Degradation” affects engine efficiency, it doesn’t shrink your gas tank, but yes, the effect is similar.... but in an ICE you are rarely ever concerned about making your destination without a “charging” stop. An EV battery gauge along with energy efficiency graphs, can actually give you some decent idea of real world range expectations in addition to the basic functionality of showing if you are near “E” or not.
When comparing cars, % is useless. kWh I realize is actually a truer energy number but less useful for comparisons due to wildly different consumption numbers. Guess-o-meters that show miles based on recent driving are also not useful for comparison.
I think Tesla’s choice to show rated miles makes the most sense.
Rated miles in my Model 3 SR+ compared to rated miles in someone else’s LR, or to a Model S, X, Y, or even another manufacturer’s EV that uses rated miles.
% is variable. kWh is not variable, but the meaning of it is not consistent across cars, so in the end rated miles seems best (well, 2nd best to rated kilometres obviously).
I'm using % again but plan to switch to miles in a couple of weeks. Still deciding which I LIKE best since neither are WRONG.
It’s okay if you disagree with me, I can’t force you to be right. ;P
Also I had an EV that forced creep and thought it was BAD. When I picked up my 3 I turned it off first thing. At my location I must back to within <12" of a wall. I could not accurately, quickly or safely do it (scary). Posted and someone said to try creep. I was resistant and almost indignant. However gave it a try and it works perfectly and the ONLY way to easily/safely back very close to the wall. Also I just push brake HOLD and it is like you don't have creep on at a stop light. So there is a GOOD reason to have it even though I would have hotly debated otherwise in the past (see my want to believe comment above).
If you don’t engage hold (I found it takes more brake pressure to get into hold with creep on, and it’s easier to get into hold with creep off) then creep can be super dangerous at an intersection. If you faint and your foot slips off the brake pedal your car will “unintendedly accelerate” into the intersection. I find this ‘feature’ highly unsafe due to this point alone. I’ve also found that I can modulate the accelerator pedal while parking at extremely low speeds like a couple km/hr with creep off, while if creep was on it doesn’t let me do that since the minimum creep speed is higher than I want to go, forcing me to the brake pedal when I otherwise don’t need to use the brake yet. I also have a hunch that a large portion of “sudden unintended acceleration” events are people in parking lots used to creep, thinking they are creeping with their foot on the brake when they are still on the accelerator, and then when they decide to stop, they press down and zooom — accident. Much safer in general to always have foot on accelerator to “go”, and foot on brake to “stop”. Not
have foot on accelerator to “go”, foot on brake to “stop”, except sometimes foot on brake to go slowly and to stop.
Train your muscle memory and brain NOW, so that one day when you are older or just distracted, you don’t have a “sudden unintended acceleration” event of your own.
It also just seems like a good safety feature for the 2000 pound chunk of metal on wheels to not move forwards until I actively press a pedal intended to make it go forwards. Creep isn’t a “feature” of automatics, it’s a limitation. If they could have made automatics without creep we’d never have this “feature” today.
