Driving Too Slow (2023 Update)

That is an obsession. A rude and dangerous one on a public highway. I think that some fraction of electric vehicles serve cheapness obsessions.

It's much worse on a long mountain uphill in a blizzard. You can't even afford to run the heater.

Driving 40 mph, and waiting around for a car to recharge, suggests that your time isn't worth much.

The WSJ found one pathological person who does this, and now we have confirmed two.

I never see anyone doing anything but hauling ass in their Bolts or Teslas or Mach Es around here, same as everyone else. I saw a Mitsubishi Mirage doing almost 90 the other day, it has three cylinders.

Anyway, the average sale price of a new EV is about 55 grand and prices lately, like most other types of vehicle, only seem to go upwards.

Owning and driving a personal car in general isn't what you do to "save money" it's a money-sink to a greater or lesser degree, any way you slice it.

Depends on what one's time is worth. I save about 2 hours a day by driving to work.

I couldn't read the article but I guarantee 95% of the people pissing the rest of humanity off trying to see how many miles they can pull with their toy on public roads are retired engineers, ham radio operators, and other miscreants.

... if the heaters even work!

Seems they are using heat pumps. I don't know about the ones in the cars,but the ones in the homes do not work well at all when it is much below 20 deg F. They are trying to operate the cars at zero and below.

My Volt has a convenient inline-four battery charger & space heater for when it gets down into the single digits.

For whatever reason maybe due to the high compression ratio and relatively high RPM it runs at when used this way when the engine is cold it blows enormous clouds of condensation when it starts up at those temperatures, almost like laying a smokescreen. Sort of amusing coming from an "electric vehicle"

At the very least, if you're driving significantly slower than the general flow of traffic, you should have your hazard flashers on. Otherwise, you're at a higher risk of being rear-ended by a less-than-attentive driver.

Even that may not be legal. Here in California, the Vehicle Code says "No person shall drive or operate on a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation because of a grade, or compliance in the law."

So, driving slowly (and impeding other drivers), because you don't want to run down your battery, is a violation, and you can be ticketed for it. If you ignore the angry drivers and the police, you may end up needing to explain the case to a judge, in court.

I think this is a problem that is hugely overstated. I see people driving whatever speed they want in whatever sort of car they want to drive. This is not a problem unique to EVs in any way. In Puerto Rico the problem is even worse. The right lane on many highways can run out without warning. Lane ending signs are so rare that when I saw one I wanted to stop and take a picture of it to show people what it means. The left lane can run out as well... again without warning. The result is the middle lane is often the default lane for drivers of all speeds. It's not unusual to see someone driving 40 MPH in the middle lane of a 60 MPH highway with cars passing on both sides. lol

Maybe Ed should move to Puerto Rico where he would feel more in the right place... oh, except there are very few chargers. But then you can live in the middle of the island and nowhere is more than 60 miles away, well, as the crow flies anyhow. I think you can take a ferry to one of the nearby islands, but you can save your battery while the ferry paddles.

That's actually not quite correct. The issue is in cold temps the output of a heat pump is less while the demand for heat is greater. So at some point the heat pump is simply not large enough to supply the required heat. If you install a larger heat pump (what was done in my father's house) it will work well down to zero Fahrenheit. I know because it had an outdoor thermostat and I tried tweaking it down. I never found a condition where it would not keep the house warm and our temps were down to low twenties at least. This winter we are seeing a lot of low teens at night here. Brrrr... Time to head back to Puerto Rico.

What was the weirdness you described for controlling the regeneration braking you talked about once? I recall a "paddle" you flipped repeatedly or something.

Ya it has a paddle under the cruise control button-area, on the back of the steering wheel for "regeneration on demand", if your foot's off the accelerator you press that and it'll engage regeneration only and not the wheel brakes. The Bolt has it also. It's not pressure-sensitive it just seems to ramp in intensity over a about a second or two, to full-on if you hold it down.

Or you can just leave the car in "L" and do the one-pedal driving-thing but I've never liked that style, it feels weird to have to push the "gas" to go down a hill, and my foot gets tired after a while. I'm on the highway on cruise control about 75% of the time, anyway.

But it's not a complete substitute for the foot-brake and can behave in ways you wouldn't expect from the foot-brake sometimes, like if you momentarily lose traction from a pothole or patch of ice it seems to instantly disengage and you lunge forwards which can be pretty jarring when it happens.

Do you have cruise control?

What is "L"? What else does it do other than make the regen work from the gas pedal?

Your foot gets tired from stepping on the accelerator pedal?

I've never seen that happen in my car. When you say it disengages, you mean momentarily, just for an instant? Yeah, that would be a little disturbing until you get used to it. That reminds me of the leaf spring rollup my brother's MG would do on a fast takeoff. It just lasts for a moment so if you ignore it everything straightens out. I think the Tesla simply prevents the wheels from rotating too much so once over the the slick spot it resumes normally as if nothing happened. I don't know how the traction control actually works, I just know I've never been able to make the car go squirrelly, even if I want to. I'm accustomed to being able to put a car or truck into a four wheel drift on ramps. I think I did that once with the Tesla, but it was very hard to do and I won't be trying it again. You really have to hit the ramp fast and hard. With the very low center of gravity it is amazingly well behaved on the road. Body roll is essentially gone.

Putting it in "L" makes it apply full regeneration every time you lift off the accelerator.

I definitely find the car rapidly slowing down every time I lift off it an irritating and fatiguing way to drive around, yeah.

Yeah the times it's occurred it's so fast I don't even notice if the TC is engaging or not when it happens, the car is decelerating as normal by regeneration, hit a big bump a certain way and you can tell the regen is just gone and you're flying free, and then it re-asserts itself about a half-second later.

No I can't make the Volt get out from under me or do anything very unpredictable with the TC on doing tests reasonable to do on public thoroughfares like trying to make it drift into an empty parking lot on packed snow at reasonable speed, where there's no great hazard if it doesn't recover well, the TC is like "no you can't do that" and the car stays pointed more-or-less where I point it.

I don't do unreasonable tests because I don't have a track membership or anywhere to really fling it around in private. The TC and ABS have saved my butt in real-world driving on a couple occasions but the TC lamp almost never comes on when I'm not trying to make it do so like above on packed snow, if it does it usually means I done f***ed up.

On some older GM cars when you turned the TC off it was really off. On newer cars in general the Volt included it's never really off when it's "off" it just switches to some less-aggressive control law.

The first gen was apparently more like the old days with the TC off but the second gen is tuned by Bosch, zee Germans don't do do zis it is alvays in zee control.

Judges in traffic court in the US tend to give you like 15 seconds to explain yourself there's 75 other people there the one morning a week they do it in even a small city like e.g. Providence RI.

"So you received a ticket for driving too slow and impeding traffic why were you doing that?"

"Well you see I was driving that way to get better fuel economy in my hybrid vehicle but I dispute the claim that I was in any way impeding traffic by d..."

"So you admit you were doing that"

"Yes bu..."

"Thank you for coming you have a 30 day extension to remit payment, you may also pay cash or credit at the window outside today. Next!"

Last time I was there of the 50 people ahead of me I think one guy got off and maybe 4 including myself got reduced fines for various reasons. You have to show up with something better than just an explanation to get off if a police officer says you were in the wrong, here.

So it doesn't vary the engine braking with the position of the accelerator? Does "L" do anything else? I can't figure what "L" is supposed to stand for.

Well, yeah, if it is only full engine braking with no control, that would suck. The Tesla gives you continuous control over engine braking and engine acceleration with the same movement of the accelerator, one continuous control. It's actually excellent and is one of the things that make driving the car so pleasurable. That and the autopilot.

I think you have to expect that. If the wheels lose grip on the road any braking isn't going to work smoothly. I've noticed that in ICE vehicles.

I don't even know how to turn TC off in the Tesla, but I'm sure there's a setting for it. I've never wanted to do that although I used to take my pickup into snowed parking lots to do donuts and would not mind trying it with the Tesla.

It does vary with accelerator position but I haven't driven a Tesla so I can't say how or if it feels different. Probably. "L" is a throwback to the "Low" gear in a gas car and I do use it on steep hills where it functions about like that. Other people drive it in "L" all the time and like it that way and they can drive it with one pedal successfully, I've never gotten accustomed to it though.

e and you're flying free, and then it re-asserts itself about a

Regeneration-only braking using the paddle seems to instantly disengage if one of the two drive wheels slips badly or goes airborne off a bump for a moment which is definitely disconcerting compared to having four wheels with mechanical brakes engaged, never had a car fully disengage all four disc brakes cuz one wheel bounced off a bump, lol.

It has something to do with the particulars of the Voltec series-hybrid FWD gearset and how it links to the motor-generators I expect, it can't regenerate when only one drive wheel is making contact.

Nobody reads the manuals no mo...:-(

FWIW I've never had it do this when using the pedal-brake lightly instead, I expect the computer is like "uh oh!" and engages the mechanical brakes momentarily to compensate.

I don't think it lights the traction control indicator either, you really have to abuse the car to get it to light up IME, when engaged it's always doing stuff silently I expect.