Wow the scenery at those superchargers sure is great... until Red Deer
Calgary to canmore is a 1hr drive, maybe give 30 mins to charge... so we have 10.5+1hr drive+.5 charge+1hr ticket avoidance=13hrs (12.5 if you have enough charge left to reach Calgary without the SC stop)
In a sense I am, but if you're following what looks like a two-footed driver, you become conditioned to the brake lights meaning little or nothing. When they go on FOR REAL(!), your reaction time will likely be longer than it would be otherwise. That's dangerous in my opinion!
I met a 60 owner on the Mt Evans drive in Colorado last year that told me he was one of those foot on or foot off drivers when he got his MS, and also did not know about the brake lights. He was pulled over for suspicion of DUI and given a field sobriety test because of the erratic behavior of his braking...
He said that since then, he has learned to be much more careful with his use of the accelerator pedal.
Perhaps a stupid question... wondering if the brakes are tied to regen at all? My Highlander would show regeneration when I lifted off the throttle, but the regen would climb way up if I used the brakes. The systems were connected seamlessly. Does the MS do this as well, or are the brakes strictly brakes?
That's what I thought, but found a bit surprising. I wonder how much energy is lost in braking. It was interesting to see how much higher the regen rate would jump when the brakes were applied in the Highlander. However, in an urban environment, there isn't much kinetic energy invested in slow speeds in traffic. And on the highway, backing off is likely what happens 99% of the time - I rarely use my brakes unless someone does something stupid. So maybe the complexity of the system in the Highlander wasn't worth the savings in energy.
Much is lost, but none that could otherwise be recovered. This has been covered in many threads on here, but basically the full regen on accelerator liftoff already captures as much energy as the battery is capable of accepting at average SOC, so there's no way to recover more energy by any form of stronger regen without making regen an incredibly unreliable braking method (braking stronger or weaker depending on SOC is not a good idea)
... which is important to avoid those money grabbing photo radar traps on roads with artificially lowered speed limits.
I've often wondered if this behavior doesn't reduce the reaction time component of breaking. I'm not sure how they test braking distance but possibly they time from brake application until the car is stationary. I think that if you timed from the event occurring to completely stopped the Tesla would outperform many other cars due to the fact that the car is already slowing down before the foot has hit the brake.
