I leased a 2018 GM Bolt for three years (basically a entry level electric car) and found that after a while I started using just the regenerative brakes for most of the time when I needed to brake. In order to do that I had to be a lot more attentive to the driving. This had the extra benefit of making me a safer driver and increasing the range of the vehicle.
Problem being that the break pads are not being used and have rust on them, reducing their effectiveness. I have detected that my front wheel breaks look rusty even though my new EV is only 4 moths old. One ov my previous ICE cars - a Volvo XC90 developed poor breaking capacity since I did a lot of highway driving and when breaking I was breaking with the engine. I am concerned that using regen too much actually is negative for the vehicle’s capacity to break
I had something very similar with the Bolt. In the three years I drove it the only maintenance I had done on it was switching the winter and summer tires, putting windshield washer fluid in it, and getting the rear brakes serviced as they were rusty. Like you I suspect this was due to my trying to use the regen brakes as much as possible. @@BjarneLauritzBull-Berg
@@BjarneLauritzBull-Berg there is a good solution to the rust problem. Make EVs use drum brakes. They are not as effective in shaving speed as a disc brake, but it's enclosed system and not exposed to the elements.
@@1HeatWalkI hate to break it to you but drum brakes are NOT a sealed system as you are inferring, drum brakes can still get rusted up. Just ask any Semi driver if he's had 'frozen' up trailer brakes.
Well that is a design fault that should be addressed by the manufacturers. I had to have new discs at 51,000 miles on my Leaf because of corroded and pitted discs caused by lack of use.@@BjarneLauritzBull-Berg
The one that is missing, that took me surprisingly long to figure out on longer journeys... Overtaking. Obviously if we never over take we will use less energy, but it will take way longer to get to where we want on those long journeys. I know, I tried it. The balance I found was rather simple. The biggest enemy I noticed for my EV is hills, EV's go up hills fine, but the range falls when you go up one. So now I do not overtake when going up any sort of a hill. If it is flat, or downhill, then I overtake. But going uphill I am fine sitting in the "slow lane." I find this has given me the ideal balance on some economy, and some much needed speed on longer journeys. So I can be doing 50mph behind a truck going up, and then go flying past it at 70mph once the road levels out or goes downhill. It really shortens the time behind the wheel.
I've used the rule of 65s for great efficiency - max 65mph and 65F cabin temp in winter (circa 18.5C). At 65mph about 7 minutes is lost per 100 miles (vs 70mph) but a lot of extra range is gained. And it's hard to travel at more than 65mph for an extended distance on Britain's congested roads in any case so the real world time loss is negligible.
@@GF-ep1pf I wouldn't function properly if I kept 18-19C at home or in the car. Maybe if I was doing a lot of manual labor like cleaning and such, but just sitting in my living room watching TV at 18C... no thank you! I'd need to layer up or crawl under a blanket. That kind of temp is down around bedroom temp, even though I prefer it warmer. My home temp is 23-24C and so is the car.
Wow this sounds bizarre! In my bmw I drive at any speed I want, have the temperature at any temp I want, have the heated seats and steering wheel on and I can maintain 55 to 65 mpg still. It takes about 3 minutes to fill the tank too. What are you compromising for? You’re not saving the planet. Taylor Swift’s jet flew 170 times between Jan. 1 and July 19 totalling 15.9 days, in the air. That output has created estimated total flight emissions of 8,293.54 tonnes of carbon, which is 1,184.8 times more than the average person’s total annual emissions. Not to mention the amount of flights in American and around the world. Us plebs are literally adding nothing to it and we’re being royally screwed.
@@CraigLedden You're lying about your fuel economy, at 70mph you use 50% more fuel per mile than at 56 mph. it's a [proven fact. Slow down and save tons of money! plus only add around 15mins time taken on a 2 hour journey (100 miles)
Your explanation of speed vs regen and forward planning is something I've tried to explain to people for years. You use the most energy/fuel to get up to speed and this means momentum is king. The brake/regen is not your friend - your objective is not to use more of it but less - in fact, as little as possible!
While I would generally agree with your statement yes, don't slow any more than necessary. But we still need to stop at traffic lights and stop signs! We also need to climb hills and slow going down the other side. In the case of ICE all the energy you used to get up to speed is lost when you used brakes to stop. In the case of an EV depending on the efficiency of the EV you will get back a percentage of the energy used to get up to speed. If you drive up a hill you will use X energy. If you drive down you will approximately ger back X-(friction from tires and wind +electrical losses in controllers and motor etc) it is simple physics, i am not an engieer and am open to factual comments.
@@andrewbell8837 Of course regen braking doors give you some energy back. It's usually smaller amount than you would expect (30-40%, I heard), but it's something. But the point is it should not be your goal to regen brake. It should be your goal to brake as little as possible, that's much more efficient.
@@jankoodziej877its close to 90% conversation. You really dont want to be skipping on regen. Momentum is not king here. In fact if you let a without regen drive down a long hill and then up the same sized hill from momentum - it will lose a bunch of energy to air friction. Meanwhile if you used regen to control your speed and stay slower on descent - you could get higher up the hill by using regened energy than by letting the car straight up roll the whole way through.
@@pofiPenguin If regen was 100% efficient then value of regen would match value of momentum but it isn’t so momentum is more valuable by the margin of regen’s efficiency loss.
It always intrigues me to see drivers hurtling up to a red light and slamming the brakes on at the last moment. The same with red brake lights in front of you, if you see them why not slow down. If you don't see them stop driving. 💀
Thanks, heated seats and steering wheel are a must in an EV, you can still be very comfortable with the main heating set lower. Nearly all your tips are well known but I still see so many drivers who ignore them, they do not anticipate the road ahead, fail to ease off the accelerator early and then brake harshly when they see standing traffic or red lights immediately in front of them.
@@BigALBoomer Yes, heated seats only use a small element that heats up just you. In my diesel car in winter, I have my heated seat on and my cabin heating with fans off and temperature set to lowest setting. I don't have climate control. This allows the engine to reach its working temperature quickest and then become more efficient. I only then once the engine has warmed-up use the cabin heater to heat the car cabin, and turn the heated seat off. Petrol and diesel engines are of course horribly inefficient when they are cold, and very polluting.
@Electric-bm7bf There is no free lunch here, yes the heated seats and wheel as you say, use the 12V system, but this is then topped up from the main traction battery so you do lose a small amount of range.
Yeah it all comes from the same place in an EV. But it’s negligible compared to the energy used to move the car most of the time. The exception is use of the resistive heating to warm the cabin this can be quite wasteful so better to use less of this wherever possible.
@@andrewharland7727 Correct My current car, heatpump heated, uses on longer distance 95% for traction (engine usage inclusing motor controler). 3 to 4% for heatpump and the rest for other electronics (as cruise control seat heating) On short distances the energy usage for electronics and heater is muuch more than those 5%. This also comes due to the fact that EVEN the efficient EV's generate some restheat in battery and engine. That little warmer air coming from those components can make the heatpump working more efficient. But it takes 20 to 40 miles, depending tempm outside, before this efficiencies come into play.
I remember years ago that at my company we did an economy run amongst some of the staff. Same route with a mixture of town and country driving including some motorway. The same car was used for each 30 mile round trip and there was a maximum time allowed for the total trip (to stop anyone just driving slowly). The best driver acheived 86mpg and the worst only 43mpg! The only reason for the huge difference was the driving style. A lot was learnt from that lesson.
Thank you for this video. As a new EV owner, this has been immensely helpful. Regen has been a learning curve, especially when the previous owner has left it set on max regen and I wondered why it was aggressively braking itself when I took my foot off the accelerator. Looking forward to applying this advice as I absolutely love my e-Niro in the few weeks I’ve had it. Thanks again and look forward to more of your videos.
This topic is one of the reasons why we LOVE the paddles in our Ioniq5. We can very easily shift to coast and introduce inefficiency much less often (since we don’t slowdown-then-speed-back-up) and we have been amazed how much this extends miles/kWh numbers. The other thing we do is drive behind larger vehicles or trucks on the highway and draft - big boost to miles/kWh.
@@davidpearn5925 Wow that is great efficiency. I suspect it would be even better if you didnt have the constant, though small, acceleration/regen bleeding off efficiency. We sometimes click to 1 pedal in traffic just to avoid foot fatigue, but for regular driving the constant, though small, herky/jerk of 1-pedal is annoying. I have rented teslas several times from hertz just to see if it was any different than the ioniq but it felt exactly the same. The fact that tesla forces 1-pedal is one of the reasons we don’t buy them.
Thanks and its good to hear your take on the addiction of EV Regen! It is something I've always done ie. setting Regen to a low setting because the recovery of the genetic energy of a car in motion during a coast is nearly 100% as the car covers distance whereas using Regen has efficiency losses at every stage of conversation ie. motion captured, conversion into AC electricity, rectification into DC the storage in a chemical battery. The other return trip from chemical energy to DC electrical energy, through the Inverter to AC Electricity into rotational energy into kinetic energy as the car is accelerated up to speed again. Cut out the regen middleman and coast. It's advice I often share with new EV drivers.
I've recently seen some other EV driving coverage that makes exactly the same point - you will always save more by coasting than you gain via regen, for the reasons you give. It's surprising though that pretty much every single EV review I've ever watched or read talks about turning up the regen settings to get more range. Is this because car journalists haven't studied physics?
You of course don't use regen if you don't need to, you can still of course coast with regen set to full. If you need to slow down, then regen is of course way more efficient that using the brake. I think the way the Tesla implements the regen is very natural, and there should be no reason for efficiency drops by having set to full. I mean it's pretty simple really, let you foot of the accelerator more, you will regen more, let it off less then you will regen less. This has absolutely nothing to do with coasting, as in both cases you can still do that.
All true unless and until you use the brakes, the moment you need to use brakes (apply pads to disc) all of that efficiency goes down the drain, so coasting down a hill periodically slowing down by usint the brakes (applying pads to dic) is clearly going to be less efficient than using regen to moderate your speed....
You can coast with a medium or high regen setting by simply not lifting your foot all the way off the accelerator and still get the benefit of regen when you need it, this method provides the absolute optimum efficiency, you lose nothing controlling the coast via the pedal v turning it off or down. You can't do the opposite when you have regen turned down or off which inevitably leads to more physical braking and every time you put your foot on the brake you are wasting energy. Apart from a bi-monthly planned moderate application of the brakes from 50mph to ensure they are kept in good order I doubt I have touched the brake pedal more than 1/2 a dozen times over 11,000 miles in combined freeway and city traffic conditions. I have a lifetime efficiency of 177 Wh/mile and often sit in the low 150's for extended periods in good weather.
Good tip on the use of regen vs coasting and it is counter intuitive that coasting is the better option most of the time. I know you can coast in b mode by moderating the pedal but as a new ev driver you have to learn how to do this so best to keep it in normal mode. Or save B mode for around town and use normal on your motorway runs.
Great tips. Our BMW i4 has a nice dead zone where you can choose to glide even in one pedal mode. But it was nice to have a low regen setting to learn how well coasting works. Now that we've had it for a few months, I've gotten more proficient at finding the coast point, occasionally scanning to the power meter to confirm I'm neither regen braking, nor adding power when on a down grade. But keeping it in B (one pedal mode) means that I can really dial in a bit of regen as I pick up speed or anticipate a slow up ahead. A charging tip: I know a lot of retired people who have forgone installing an EVSE and instead rely on their very low power (110V, 1.6 kW) included emergency charging cable for all their home charging. But most EVs use several hundred watts to power the AC->DC inverter while charging, so spending many more hours charging very slowly actually wastes up to 30% more power than charging more quickly with a more powerful EVSE (7-11 kW) in a shorter time. It seems trivial, but these charging losses are worth assessing and addressing.
I always wondered about this would there be more charging losses using the granny charger - thanks for clarifying. The other aspect is time. How long would it take to replace the miles used on the commute and would it even be an option at all.
@@andrewharland7727we’re waiting for a 7KW wall charger installation later this month so have been stuck with the granny charger since getting our first EV about 3 weeks ago. Connected to a standard UK socket I’m seeing around 2.6KW and, while slow, it does add an appreciable percentage overnight. Got the standard midnight to 5am discounted EV tariff and last night went from 65% SoC to 80% easily in that window, with an air temperature of near freezing (car was iced this morning). For a short commute that would probably be workable, more so if you are happy to charge outside of an overnight EV tariff.
Regular 110vac plugs are rated 15amps.but the load should not exceed 80% which means you have 110x12 watts 1.32kw likewise 220vac on a 60 amp breaker which is also limited to 80% is 220x48=11watts the lower number come from 40 or 50 amps all with max 80% why 80% because some load in particular motors spike higher on start. I would suggest they all have the same % of losses.
@@andrewbell8837 I think you meant 11kW for level 2 and 1.32 for level 1. The point about percentage of losses isn't true if you charge for 2 hours vs. 20 hours, because the on-board inverter goes to sleep for 18 hours in the case of level 2. While it could be true that you spread your conversion losses across more hours with level 1 and percentage lost is presumed to be the same, what people who have tested this have actually found is that you have OVERHEAD of the powered on status of the on-board inverter for 10 times as many hours, and if that powered on state runs at a minimum of 400 watts/hr, you'd get an additional 18 hours where that underpowered inverter is wasting juice. If you don't believe me, google it. Level 1 charging wastes more power on e-GMP and Bolt. I'm not sure it's been proven on other cars. I once heard a Fiat 500e owner who measured his charging losses claim their were 20%. No doubt he was slow charging with Level 1 and the minimum inverter power was dwarfing the presumed AC-DC conversion losses.
A huge thank you for this. I just bought an EV. I already know what to do prior to driving my EV for the first time. Very clear and concise video with a lot of important info. 🙏🏻
Given the relatively low cost of fuel for an EV when charging at home, and the torquey nature of EV's, if I'm not on a long trip, I 'enjoy' the acceleration of the EV, away from lights, out of corners and roundabouts. It's lots of fun and catches so many ice's by surprise. Then, if I'm on a long trip and want to minimise the total journey time, I apply most of EVM's methods to drive efficently.
thank you for educating about regen, people seem to think regen is 'free money' and more is better. It helps to explain that the energy that you try to regenerate has already been taken out of the battery during acceleration and that regen only gets somewhere about 50-75% of the energy back into the battery. The other thing about driving with zero regen is the fact that is actually educates the driver into driving smootly and planning ahead, like taking your foot of the pedal and rolling up to a red light. I drive 9-10 km/kWh in my 2018 Ioniq in the summer and you can't get an EV today that matches it, which is why I have put in a reservation for an Aptera that does 16 km/kWh
I can do that in my Skoda Enyaq. My Leaf is even better with up to around 5.6 miles per kwh. You just have to drive carefully and it helps to have a nice long journey without too many hills and twisty bits.@@MrNeeds
I've been driving this way for my entire life. I mean slow acceleration and deceleration and anticipating the road ahead. Thanks for explaination of regen and hiw best to use it.
Thank you, you are saying for most people one pedal driving is less efficient than any other mode. The problem with driving slow toward traffic lights is that it annoys other people who want to race to the lights so that can look at their phones while stationary. Finally, there are those who can afford 40K plus on their EV dont really care how much it costs to run the car. Dont forget Tesla dont have regen on their brake pedal.
@@ElectricVehicleMan Rubbish (sorry!) I've spent c.40K on my EV (OK, on 0% interest), and have Home Charging, I'm not really counting the pennies. I do the gradual slowing down to red lights, and I'm very aware that following drivers are probably getting frustrated (silly, I know...)
@@stnicolastaplow4096 Now put yourself in a position where outgoings shoot up and money is suddenly tight. You’ll then be doing the easy wins like this to save potentially hundreds a year.
@@ElectricVehicleMan it costs me about, I don’t know, about £5 for a typical 60% top-up. Of course, things could suddenly go downhill, but I’m a lot less concerned about my EV’s efficiency than I was about my 3.5 litre BMW, my previous car (btw, your BMW comment in this video was a bit lazy…)
Regen is MUCH more efficient than friction braking but in certain situations coasting is slightly more efficient than regen because regen is a lossy process when it captures and then reuses the energy.
I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with EVM or contradicting him. Yes, regen is more efficient than friction braking but I think EVM was talking about another option. I can't speak for Taycan, as I have no experience of that, but I do have 60,000 miles of experience in ETron 55s'. This can regen when coasting and regens when using the brakes (except in emergencies when the friction brakes come into play). IMO this method of regen is far more normal to new EV buyers who are, sometimes put of by the your driving (coming from an ICE car) to one pedal driving. Driving the car normally but getting regen through NORMAL use of the brakes is quite productive and, in my opinion, far easier than trying to adapt to one pedal driving. In an ETron you can, if you want, use the two stage regen paddles which will, if you plan it, slow you down to 3-4 miles an hour which in most cases would be sufficient if that is the way you want to do it. As others have said, the best efficiencies come from good forward planning and not slowing down too much only then having to accelerate too much to get back up to speed.
I agree with @philartley, but it depends on if foot braking (with regen off/low) really does trigger decent amount of regen charging (??) - it doesn't feel like it to me, nor is that what the regen/charging display tells me. Does anyone know for sure if this applies to cars other than the likes of Taycan? Personally, I love one-pedal driving in towns and on country roads - so much easier and smoother (less aggressive accelerator). I do turn regen off/down on motorways for exactly the reasons given by EVMan here, but I disagree with telling new EV users to turn it off completely, at all times.
@@robertduncan5912it doesn't matter whether the deceleration happened because you put your foot on the brake pedal or the car was doing it for you because regen was turned up - it's the same deceleration either way with the same regen effect. I can see 100% that it happens in my Kia Niro. It has an energy dial on the dash with a section below the line showing regen strength. The needle goes below the line when I brake. Only when I brake hard so the needle hits the bottom (max regen) will the car then think of using the friction brakes. Otherwise the friction brakes hardly get used. Which is why at my 20k service, the report said my pads were only 8% worn. Even though I set the regen level off or low.
@@Richard-io9xe Are you sure about this? My "regen meter" in Ioniq 5 shows very little regen when I foot brake with regen off. If your brake pads show little wear and if you have regen off, then that is "proof of the pudding" for your car, but I'm not convinced it works like that in all EVs.
So glad to hear your view on regen. My best way to explain why sailing is better than one pedal driving is comparing to a rollar coaster. A rollar coaster sails through its rails purely on the kinetic energy from its high starting point. Its also usually a safer driving mode as it intuitively makes you plan ahead and drive more carefully
I love my Tesla one pedal mode… it manages to be optimal in every situation, maximazing roll whell relieving the accelerator or doing regen or braking when fully releasing the accelerator. So look for a good regen implementation and get used to it… you will love it, and only use brakes for emergencies.
I'm always in B mode and find it easy to lift off the throttle only as little as necessary to maintain the minimum gap to vehicle in front in slowing traffic. Also got pretty good at judging when to lift completely when I know I've got to stop, maybe at a red light, and then arrive at the stop line just as the car slows to minimum speed. Except in an emergency, this is the only time I touch the brake pedal (to activate autohold). Another advantage to `B` mode is when you need to make an emergency stop you are already slowing significantly the moment you lift your foot and some time before you get your foot pressing down on the brake - this must give a shorter stopping distance. As a bit of a nerd, I used to get home in an IC car and occasionally feel the front wheel / disc and be surprised just how hot they were even after a gentle drive - I get home in an EV and they're always stone cold. Open to discussion, but if you never slow too much and never touch the brake, it must be more economical, mustn't it?
For the past 4.5yrs I've owned a classic 28kWh Ioniq and love it. The paddle regen is what I use there is no one pedal driving mode and glad there isn't. I use the paddles to adjust my speed and use coast mode alot. Great video and although my car doesn't have heated seats or steering wheel I agree and find it just as good having the temp a half a degree or degree lower gives more range. The driver only mode doesn't save alot maybe 1-2km I find. I think the racing to the lights is the yobbo thing to do so we won't stop those people they will continue to drive like that no matter what fuel powers their car.
Great video for beginners. I have driving an EV6 over three years and use the paddle shifters to change the regeneration settings on the go. I rarely use the brake pedal to slow down, except to occasionally clean the rotors and exercise the calipers. On the EV6, the hydraulic braking system is completely independent. When regen is set to zero, the brakes will generate heat and waste energy. Your regen advice is helpful to for vehicles that do not easily allow "on the fly" adjustments. All of your other suggestions are spot on and can make a significant difference with saving energy.
Have to disagree with you about using regen, I drive my Nissan Leaf in B mode most of the time and find it gives me best efficiency, 40 years as a driving instructor I drive like I taught, road reading and advanced planning and timing the easing off correctly in relation to hazards to minimise use of the brakes. Yes I agree regen can be a bit harsh but only if you let off the accelerator completely, if you feather the accelerator the progress can be precisely what you want it to be while getting decent amounts of regen. One thing you omitted was how much regen level changes with battery SOC, in my Leaf the regen is pretty much identical in D or B mode above 90% and gets progressively more the lower the battery goes more so in B than D. I do very occasionally used D in preference to B mode on long gentle down gradients where easing off completely produces no speed loss so very efficient which in B would pull the speed down too much.
I drive as you do, but what EVM said is true. As you said you feather the accelerator which means you are often not using regen, in D you would be feathering the brakes. I use one pedal driving as I live in London with heavy traffic and I find it easier than moving my foot from one pedal to the next. However on a longer fast run I don't use it because it is easier to relax your leg without losing too much speed. Also on a long run with heavy regen on your foot is fixed in one position for along time which I find mote fatiguing.
@@ElectricVehicleMan I don't know of any EVs which don't have cruise control, when it's engaged and the car meets a downhill gradient the cruise control holds the set speed with regen, if the car starts to go down a severe incline with say a fairly full battery the cruise control can't hold the speed, not enough regen, if that happens in my Leaf the set CC speed on the instrument panel flashes.
Many of your points are valid for ICE cars. On regen - I love regen for corners, the ability to vary regen and "slow" into a bend without having to hit the brakes is brilliant for a good stable (ok, usually fast) exit, and at this time of year with slippery roads the added braking effect is very useful. Currently driving an Enyaq, does a brilliant job for my 90% commuting miles and preheat in the winter is awesome.
I followed a National Express coach for over 100 miles recently, sitting in its slip-stream, whilst taking advantage of its Wi-Fi. When you drive a Fiat 500 which is as aero dynamic as a brick, it makes a huge difference
Thanks for the video, I have been watching you for a while and always appreciate your comments. As a fellow Yorkshireman i was particularly pleased to see you driving around the town I was born in, Baildon, but left for sunnier climes in 1995. Keep up the good work. Andy, BYD Seal owner since nov 30th.
Amen, Amen, Amen, and Amen. I'm a hybrid driver, and I find that charge management is as big a factor in hybrid fuel economy as it is in EV range. I have used all of these techniques (except pre-heating) to squeeze excellent economy out of my Honda Accord hybrid. For one 2500-hundred-mile summer stretch, I was able to get 60 MPG (3.9 L/HKm) out of a 3900-pound (1770-kg) sedan with a US EPA rating of 47 MPG. A big factor seems to be coasting rather than using auto-regen. although I have to shift to neutral to make that work. It's always more economical to use your kinetic energy to coast (i.e gain distance directly) than to to store that kinetic energy in a battery, where you can use maybe 75% of it to gain distance under power later. When, as I hope, I become an EV driver, I intend to follow your lead.
Thank you so much for all the tips. It’s is very informative. I totally agree with what you say. I never understand people around me seeing a red light and overtaking me just to stop. Unfortunately here in Germany for what ever reason the lights aren’t choreographed so that when you keep driving a steady speed you basically arrive to a green light and before you arrive to the next light it will be green. It’s the exact opposite. You drive from one read light to another. No idea why. I tend to have my regen on max. I’m used to it so I know how the car behaves but I agree that sometimes one slows down more that intended and looses the momentum. I’ll def try to lower the setting. Also what I never understood is why almost no EV has a full regen off so it’s only coasting. With my Mx 30 that what I loved and I wouldn’t have to try to have my gas pedal in the middle so to have sort of coasting style of driving.
I coast in neutral when I recognize a stretch of road in front of me where my momentum will maintain speed for a good distance before I will have to break or slow down The distance gained from Regen will not equal the distance that I got from coasting because there is always losses in energy conversion I then switch to drive when I get closer to where I will have to stop to slow down quicker and get some regen
Thanks for a no nonsense video. You’re one of a very few EV channels which doesn’t get all preachy and smug about EVs. I’m an ICE driver and have no intention of changing ( and yes I have driven EVs ). So many channels delight in ridiculing ICE drivers for not embracing EVs rather than accepting it’s a matter of personal choice.
You’re brilliant. I’ve been following you for a while as I’ve been planning an electric car for ages. I got my first Leaf on Monday and I’ve been wondering about all these things. So thank you, perfect timing. I’ve just noticed this was posted 6 months ago. Ha. TH-cam must have picked something up from my searching.
Hi EVM, greetings from Oxford. Some good tips here, I think the main takeaway is ‘finesse’. I would add that your instruments can help, most cars can give you dynamic fuel consumption data on the instrument cluster at the press of a few controls, this gives useful feedback that can improve your driving style. I have a BMW i3, which also has a ‘swingometer’ on the drivers display - very useful.
I think regen is about 75% efficient. But there's also tyre wind resistance and friction in any journey up and back down a hill. So you'd not get back 75% of what you started with.
Thanks for this. Clarified the regen thing for me. I always drive on minimum regen as it feels more natural to me so it is nice to be reassured this is not clobbering my range. Unfortunately my wife goes from freezing at 21 degrees to melting at 21.5 so is always messing with my air con!
It is clobbering your range... this is the most ass backwards advice I've heard in years of being super active in EV space. Tesla even went as far as to entirely forbid reducing regen - you just always have max. Specifically because of dumb takes like this, which afterwards complain about the car ubderperforming in terms of range.
@@pofiPenguinno. The best for the effiency is to coast as much as possible and only after that if you need to brake then you use regen. Thats the way if you want to maximise the range
on motorways the simple way is cruise control as it will adjust as required I found, I drove from Birmingham to Newcastle mainly on CC and got an average of 3.2kwh in not great weather. Sadly coming back it was pissing down all the way and went down to 2.8 !
Not an EV owner yet, but my next car will be. Really enjoy your videos. As a lorry driver, we are trained to keep the wheels rolling as much as possible. Back in 2012 i completed my Smith System training, which goes into mainly how to improve fuel efficiency, and reduce accidents. You can imagine the savings if every driver on a fleet, drove a bit more efficient. Those few litres a day, add up over a week, month and year. It's the same for EV's. The more efficient you drive, the further you can go. The Smith System originated from the US. Worth looking in to Keep up the good work 👏
I find the best regen setting (in my 2020 Kia e-Niro) is 1. You can't turn it off completely but 1 gives you about the same slowing down action as lifting off in a petrol car. I find this the most natural and also means that it doesn't take me by surprise when I switch to my other ICE cars. The brake pedal uses regen anyway so it doesn't change the efficiency. The only benefit to having regen set to maximum is that you would get a little slowing down in an emergency. It takes most people around 0.2 of a second to move their foot from accelerator to brake pedal. At 70mph, that's over 6 meters. So you would shave off a little in an emergency brake but it's probably very marginal.
My Volvo has OPD - either on or off, no other choices. I like it as I have driven a lot of autos and towed horses ... so the principle of feathering the throttle ... easy and gradual slowing with smooth even acceleration come naturally.
I tend to think of Volvo One Pedal Drive as being infinitely variable, with the caveat that variation of the accelerator pedal produces a predictable degree of regeneration, from coasting to stopping - no adjustment needed. Even in non-OPD mode, the car uses regeneration to slow down until it hits 1/3G, with the exception of ABS or ASC intervention. In Adaptive Cruise, the car also uses Regen to control the speed. Given the XC40s very unslippery .32 drag coefficient and my car’s permanent AWD (2024s are different), I’m quite happy with up to 400km of usable range in the summer. EVs require a change in habits. Take your time, enjoy the scenery, chill out when it’s time to recharge. Life isn’t about how quick you get from A to B or comparing your car to everyone else’s.
In my E-Golf I use max regen and wherever possible I use cruise control, particularly in 20mph limits and keep my speed as constant and smooth as possible
I'm not an EV driver yet, but I am a fan. The one misconception I had about regen was that it didn't occur to me that the brake pedal engaged the regen before it engaged the brake pads. I always thought you need to have the regen slow the car down upon releasing the accelerator in order to benefit from it. Thanks for that info.
This may be a daft question but ….when using levels of regen above the off/lowest, do the brake lights come on? It seems a little dangerous to have the level of braking that high regen gives without letting traffic behind know that you are slowing down.
I think this needs more research on what "foot braking" actually does in terms of regen when regen is off/low. There seems to be some confusion as to whether the car automatically starts breaking with regen, even when regen is off/low. (this needs to be answered, and in my EV - Ioniq 5 - it certainly doesn't feel like it operates that way). No good telling people to turn it off cos there will always be regen as a default if that's not the case in many cars, otherwise you lose a major advantage of EVs: less wear of brakes pads and shedding of brake dust.
@@IanMayerYes, it's mandated that brake lights must come on when the braking force exceeds a set level. It doesn't matter how the braking is achieved, its the rate of deceleration that will determine if the lights come on.
I totally understand and follow your point about forwarding planning. However, when I take over in front of a red light, it's usually because I want to get ahead in the line of cars ahead of me in total because I know that over time and the line of lights ahead that will save me time off my journey so that can be a part of forward planning, too 🤪 not saying it's more efficient but there you go 🎉
You're great man! I'm from Germany and I love your videos! I am an efficiency-nerd with a bad right ankle-joint and I just don't get this hype around one-pedal-driving. It puts unnecessary cycles on the battery, it stresses the driver, it increases reaction time because one probably loses the habit of having the foot hover over the brake pedal in a potentially dangerous situation. The advent if EVs does a lot to uncover the amount of ignorance on physics in the general population. There really is a need for a basic science education in our societies!
I recently bought my first EV, a 2014 Tesla. I Bought it to take advantage of the solar system that came with the house we bought in California a couple of years ago. The car we bought had ony 61,000 miles on it with an average lifetime energy consumption on it of 336 watt hour/mile which translates to 33.6 kwh per 100 miles. I have driven it about 1700 miles with an average consumtion of 269 wh/mile. That's 20% less, than the previous one owner, and I am doing mostly freeway driving, with the air conditioning on, with some signicant hills on my route. I drive more miles than my range estimate goes down.
The point about the relationship between power used to accelerate vs the amount reclaimed by regen is key. As you say it’s very easy to scrub of speed unintentionally, which hurts more than the regen benefit. On my Ioniq 5 the paddles allow you to manually engage max regen by holding one paddle even when you are zero-regen setting and I’ve found that arrangement far better than anything else, especially when you are properly planning ahead to maintain momentum.
I like your comment on regen. As a new ev driver I was trying to get use to one pedal driving but couldn’t help but think I was losing on coasting which is beneficial, thanks again
A few times I've seen "stay below 65mph" when maybe it thinks I'd be touch and go to reach destination. When the supercharger is a bit off the route/ not familiar, slowing down to not have to charge is better!
I always use the lowest regen setting and use the brake pedal as a dynamic regen, e.g. the physical brakes will never be used. The positive thing is also that those driving behind me don’t have to look at blinking brake lights but rather constantly on ones, which is much more nice for them
The most important thing: When you brake you lose (potential) energy. Regen brakes lose less energy, but it is still a waste. Efficient drivers don’t brake often and don’t brake hard. Every time you press brake (or lift up leg to regen) think about why you had to do that. Next time before the same situation you press less gas pedal. Eventually you notice that you don’t need to brake much at all.
The I ly time I use regen in my E-Niro is going down steep hills, fully agree with you about regen. No accelerator is less lower lost than accelerating back up to speed or on slow accents.
The A/C compressor run for both cooling and heating in gas vehicles In heating the AC adjust the amount of heating from full heating and also to dry the air to prevent the windows from fogging in the winter because the heat is only high EVs heating output is adjustable though it also needs the AC to dry the air
Note re regen and using the break pedal. Not all cars offer blended braking options. Tesla AFAICT don't and using the break pedal is always 100% mechanical break being applied. It will apply regen only on when you release pressure on the accellerator.
use the accelerator less in the first place rather than using it and regening only a % of the lost energy later. basics but so many don't seem to get it.
Another for me is making usie of heated seats and steerring wheel if only the driver is in the car and less heating. Also, selecting an EV with a heat pump when purchasing.
Great mention of forward planning, which is what advanced drivers call Acceleration Sense. Better to sit back and cruise an average speed than to join the traffic caterpillars (clusters of cars having to accelerate and brake due to being bunched up below reaction times).
Also if you've got dual or quad zone heating & you're in the car on your own, there's no point in heating/cooling the unoccupied zones. Personally I'd say tyre pressures should be fortnightly ideally (guilty of not doing it often enough myself) rather than monthly, but that may be because I don't have TPMS on my current Dino-juice car.
I have found that using regenerative braking is fine but instead of taking your foot all the way off the accelerator, just ease it off depending on how much you want to slow dowm, I turn it off when going uphill and back on going downhill, the other thing is to look ahead and slow early but gently which gives you the choice of slowing to a stop or keeping going, I have seen people who stamp on the accelerator and stamp on the brakes, even going through a gorge with a lot of corners, I tend to accelerate gently and brake gently but I accelerate before I am ou of the corner and brake deep into the corner, that is just as quick but much smoother.
I have learned how to drive efficiently through smooth acceleration and braking/regen. However the biggest difference between 3 miles per Kwh and 4 miles per Kwh is temperature. Cold weather makes a massive difference in battery performance.
Depends on the battery management (heating) during the travel. When driving longer distances I have noticed that the difference is less than wehn doing a lot of short distances. But also the drag (air resistence) is 1% more every 3 degrees colder. The drag cannot be reduced. Also with fog and rain we need to push more weight out of the way with the car making it less efficient.
Excellent video for newbies and idiots. I have had EVs for 6 years and can confirm that for the best milage 0 regen and gentle right foot is the way to go. I may use 3 in heavy traffic but I have the advantage that my new Kona as auto regen so I default it to 0 and it will increase it if it detects heavy traffic. Heating 19 is more than enough, you can always use the heated seats and steering wheel to top up and in summer the aircon is set to 22. Last summer my Gom showed 362 miles and was only out by about 30
Very good tips on practicing energy management. I only use the " CHILL" mode now. No more rapid accelerating, and yes, I can see a difference in the amount of energy used. I love the ability of Tesla cars to drive using the one pedal system. I can literally ho for weeks without ever stepping on the break pedal. That should see a payoff in decreased costs on break pads. Thanks to all for additional energy management tips left I'm the comments. That three 65s one was awesome.
Honestly everything aside for regen applies to every cars. Anticipation is probably number 1..not only will you drive more smoothly (and if you have passengers they'll appreciate it) but you save on fuel and reduce particles emissions from your breaks (and use them less). It's really a win win. And not because you're using gasoline that you should drive at the max speed limit on highway either. Running at 110 instead of 130 makes a world of difference on the tank.
Sorry I had to re do the start of this post as you are correct about epedal driving although there isn't alot in it, winter if driving a long way you are best doing it in one go, For example I did 80 miles back from Bridlington with 2 20 minutes stops and the motor and battery cooled down, It took 20 more miles range than going where I didn't stop, I think pre heating would reduce any loss.
I think most people think they have to get to next set of lights as quick as possible. And wait again lol. I also have electric bike and drivers in 20mph areas seem to need to get past even when there is a car in front so they can't go anywhere
The key i believe is forward anticipation. I think if you use that in any car your driving experience will be more relaxed and more efficient. An by the way i drive in eco and b mode everywhere and see virtually no difference in the leaf. The only downside is disc brakes corrode with lack of use. Believe tesla pads touch discs every so often which should help that.
Well done for tackling the subject and explaining it for the layman far better than I've ever managed to. I've seen people saying they were uncomfortably low on charge so turned on maximum regeneration in order to conserve as much power as possible, and I had to give up trying to explain that it was counterproductive.
When you see traffic lights ahead change to red, then come off the gas & coast & brake gently to a stop without crawling. Reading the road ahead is good driving, avoids accidents or getting caught up in one. Oh, please use your indicators at roundabouts, that helps drivers to know they can judge the roundabouts speeds.
I spoke to a guy at BMW and he said that they were seeing EV brake pads lasting 100k miles, because people were using B mode a lot. I had mine checked after a year (10k miles) and they had barely lost anything. Mind-blowing.
If you’re in those conditions you shouldn’t be driving. Either fit winter tyres or chains. As you’ve lost your ability to steer out of trouble or brake hard. I’ve lived in snow country and experienced this, which is why I like my chains. If you are ever in the US, stock up on some z-chain chains as they’re way better than the stuff they sell in the UK. And my scandi friends say “just use winter tyres”. Never tried that
Relaying on regen to break tends to smooth down the acceleration and breaking cycle. Without one pedal driving, i trend to accelerate and break more heavily when i need to stop. When i drive on a highway, i use cruise control which keeps my speed constant.
I think using regen braking has improved my driving significantly. I do drive with much more finesse. The on screen feedback is useful. I hardly ever use the brake pedal in my Tesla. For me not using it (I rarely drive on a motorway as there are no motorways in my part of East Anglia) is a sign that I am driving well. Avoiding hard acceleration and anticipating the need to slow down or stop by easing off gradually. I do use the brakes from time to time but mainly to ensure that they are still efficient and not covered in “debris”. Did you factor in to your thinking the cost of replacing brake pads/discs? I’m not expecting to have to replace mine before I move to my next car. I have had the current one for 30 months.
Apart from the fact that preheating the battery while still plugged in to the home charger saves range, does it have other benefits for the car? My husband drives more and keeps his car plugged in every night with a scheduled middle of the night charge, and I only need to charge my car every few days. So, should I go out 10 minutes ahead of my journey on the cold morning and plug it in to preheat the battery? Or just preheat without plugging it in? Thank you 😊
That's what I've generally desired, that the brake pedal will command regen first before the friction brakes (after all, that's what trains with rheostatic/regenerative braking have been doing for a while!), and the accelerator not being one pedal, which I find too fiddly for my liking (and which I'll try and use the cruise control where it's feasible, which does regen to maintain speed)
I leave regen on high in FL, you're always having to slow down quickly. I almost never use the friction brakes. I'm good at modulation and LOVE one pedal driving, so easy. Getting 240 watts per mile out of a MYP at slow speeds, slower the better. Sometimes only 220 in congested traffic.
Diesel and petrol (gasoline) cars, to a smaller degree, are affected by the use of heater too. Modern thermostats are working to keep the engine warm when it's cold, for emmisions & efficiency, so it's worth conserving heat on very cold days.
As far as regenerative braking, is it fair and easier to say that with an electric motor when you press the accelerator pedal it drives the motor( I know that was obvious) and when you lift your foot of the accelerator your electric motor becomes a generator and puts charge back into the car batteries
Regen on the highway is almost useless and your explanation is spot on but for city driving learning to use regen as brakes absolutely adds regen power back the the battery. I hardly use my brakes at all.
I think that might be covered under the fact that the brake pedal (in theory) uses regen where it can - at least the "real" point being made, I took to be that maintaining speed is preferable to braking (regenerative or otherwise), then if you do need to lose speed, regen is preferable to capture that power than friction. (It does make a notable difference as well, travelling in the early mornings, where traffic is light and I can maintain speed more easily, uses less battery than during busy times, where braking and reaccelerating is frequent)
Not an EV owner yet, but your point about Regen at the 8 minute mark is why I think all EV's should have flappy paddles to adjust Regen. My thought would be to have it on light but use the paddles to increase Regen depending on the circumstances. In my area, there are plenty of flat suburban roads, but some suburbs I drive through are in very hilly areas. In order to keep under the 50km/h speed limit when going down these roads (some are very long), you have to ride your brakes. If I lived in those suburbs, I would be going through brake pads more than an average driver. So having flappy paddles would be so much easier to change on the fly then one where you have to reach/look down for a button or dial, or even worse, go through a touch screen menu. But I'm not an EV driver so maybe my thoughts are rubbish but the widely varying roads (flat vs hilly) just within a 30 minute drive is why I would want easy change Regen levels.
@@davidbutt406 I would love to see some evidence of this. I'm not saying it's not true, but perhaps it could be urban legend. Eg people read your comment, accept it as true and pass it on. What would be great is if a EV channel had access to a number of cars for testing and a garage with a hoist. Take off the wheels so the calipers are visible. Turn on the car and accelerate and then use the brake pedal. See at what time after the brake pedal is pressed that the brakes engage. Like I said, I am not saying your statement is true or false, but would like to see the testing (and not just on one model of car) validating these claims. Going down a steep hill that high levels of regen braking could keep your speed in check - if using the brake pedal as you describe then how do we know how much regen is braking and how much physical pads? Maybe regen only happens for a very small travel of the brake pedal?? Who knows, hence why it would be good to see some type of testing.
I think some cars do blend regen and friction brakes on the brake pedal which is why people find them grabby and hard to moderate. I don’t think my mini does. I think the regen is used when you lift off the accelerator but if you use the brake pedal then it is always applying the friction brakes.
Thank you so much for your helpful information in this video, I'm new to EV driving after recently purchasing a Vauxhall Ampera on a 15 plate, which is replacing my 2009 Toyota Avensis tourer 2.0 d-4d (which is a brilliant car in it's own right) I'm learning more about my EV every day and trying to get the most mileage out of a charge, but finding on occasion I have to select "hold" mode to revert to the 1.4 petrol generator to ensure it can reach my location without depleting the battery fully. Will definitely take on board your tips now and see how things improve over the coming weeks and months. 👍
I would say use cruise control wherever possible, I average 4 plus per kWh. It stops speed creep, lots of people are getting caught for speeding in 20mph zones because of creep, so set it to 22mph most speedometers are 20% out. It will save money on your fuel consumption, and you are not going to get any endorsements. On the motorway I set the cruise to 65 or 70 then as I come off on the ramp which in most cases is downhill or level I find it is rare to be uphill let regen improve consumption at that point.
Regen: Some EVs do not mix regen with the friction brakes ie the brake pedal only engages friction brakes on Teslas. The energy in a body in motion is 1/2MV² so there is exponentially more regen available at higher speeds. There is also exponentially more drag at higher speeds. So if you coast, you get no regen at all and drag uses up your energy. Better to use regen at high speeds. I've not seen any quantitative analysis but I estimate that you can get ~70% of your energy back
loving it !! really nice so far.... may I give a suggestion for a next video ? what do you think an Ev should have in terms of equipment, nowadays ? Ex fast charging at 100 kw minimum, heat pump... etc , and what is useless and not needed.... have a nice day. cheers !
I leased a 2018 GM Bolt for three years (basically a entry level electric car) and found that after a while I started using just the regenerative brakes for most of the time when I needed to brake. In order to do that I had to be a lot more attentive to the driving. This had the extra benefit of making me a safer driver and increasing the range of the vehicle.
Problem being that the break pads are not being used and have rust on them, reducing their effectiveness. I have detected that my front wheel breaks look rusty even though my new EV is only 4 moths old. One ov my previous ICE cars - a Volvo XC90 developed poor breaking capacity since I did a lot of highway driving and when breaking I was breaking with the engine. I am concerned that using regen too much actually is negative for the vehicle’s capacity to break
I had something very similar with the Bolt. In the three years I drove it the only maintenance I had done on it was switching the winter and summer tires, putting windshield washer fluid in it, and getting the rear brakes serviced as they were rusty. Like you I suspect this was due to my trying to use the regen brakes as much as possible. @@BjarneLauritzBull-Berg
@@BjarneLauritzBull-Berg there is a good solution to the rust problem. Make EVs use drum brakes. They are not as effective in shaving speed as a disc brake, but it's enclosed system and not exposed to the elements.
@@1HeatWalkI hate to break it to you but drum brakes are NOT a sealed system as you are inferring, drum brakes can still get rusted up.
Just ask any Semi driver if he's had 'frozen' up trailer brakes.
Well that is a design fault that should be addressed by the manufacturers. I had to have new discs at 51,000 miles on my Leaf because of corroded and pitted discs caused by lack of use.@@BjarneLauritzBull-Berg
The one that is missing, that took me surprisingly long to figure out on longer journeys... Overtaking. Obviously if we never over take we will use less energy, but it will take way longer to get to where we want on those long journeys. I know, I tried it. The balance I found was rather simple. The biggest enemy I noticed for my EV is hills, EV's go up hills fine, but the range falls when you go up one. So now I do not overtake when going up any sort of a hill. If it is flat, or downhill, then I overtake. But going uphill I am fine sitting in the "slow lane." I find this has given me the ideal balance on some economy, and some much needed speed on longer journeys. So I can be doing 50mph behind a truck going up, and then go flying past it at 70mph once the road levels out or goes downhill. It really shortens the time behind the wheel.
I've used the rule of 65s for great efficiency - max 65mph and 65F cabin temp in winter (circa 18.5C). At 65mph about 7 minutes is lost per 100 miles (vs 70mph) but a lot of extra range is gained. And it's hard to travel at more than 65mph for an extended distance on Britain's congested roads in any case so the real world time loss is negligible.
Best way is not to buy one
I’ve noticed a lot of car reviewers set the heating to 23 degrees. Like you I keep it around 18 or 19 (same as our house).
@@GF-ep1pf I wouldn't function properly if I kept 18-19C at home or in the car. Maybe if I was doing a lot of manual labor like cleaning and such, but just sitting in my living room watching TV at 18C... no thank you! I'd need to layer up or crawl under a blanket. That kind of temp is down around bedroom temp, even though I prefer it warmer.
My home temp is 23-24C and so is the car.
Wow this sounds bizarre! In my bmw I drive at any speed I want, have the temperature at any temp I want, have the heated seats and steering wheel on and I can maintain 55 to 65 mpg still. It takes about 3 minutes to fill the tank too.
What are you compromising for? You’re not saving the planet. Taylor Swift’s jet flew 170 times between Jan. 1 and July 19 totalling 15.9 days, in the air. That output has created estimated total flight emissions of 8,293.54 tonnes of carbon, which is 1,184.8 times more than the average person’s total annual emissions. Not to mention the amount of flights in American and around the world. Us plebs are literally adding nothing to it and we’re being royally screwed.
@@CraigLedden You're lying about your fuel economy, at 70mph you use 50% more fuel per mile than at 56 mph. it's a [proven fact. Slow down and save tons of money! plus only add around 15mins time taken on a 2 hour journey (100 miles)
Your explanation of speed vs regen and forward planning is something I've tried to explain to people for years. You use the most energy/fuel to get up to speed and this means momentum is king. The brake/regen is not your friend - your objective is not to use more of it but less - in fact, as little as possible!
While I would generally agree with your statement yes, don't slow any more than necessary.
But we still need to stop at traffic lights and stop signs! We also need to climb hills and slow going down the other side. In the case of ICE all the energy you used to get up to speed is lost when you used brakes to stop. In the case of an EV depending on the efficiency of the EV you will get back a percentage of the energy used to get up to speed. If you drive up a hill you will use X energy. If you drive down you will approximately ger back X-(friction from tires and wind +electrical losses in controllers and motor etc) it is simple physics, i am not an engieer and am open to factual comments.
@@andrewbell8837 Of course regen braking doors give you some energy back. It's usually smaller amount than you would expect (30-40%, I heard), but it's something. But the point is it should not be your goal to regen brake. It should be your goal to brake as little as possible, that's much more efficient.
@@jankoodziej877its close to 90% conversation. You really dont want to be skipping on regen. Momentum is not king here.
In fact if you let a without regen drive down a long hill and then up the same sized hill from momentum - it will lose a bunch of energy to air friction.
Meanwhile if you used regen to control your speed and stay slower on descent - you could get higher up the hill by using regened energy than by letting the car straight up roll the whole way through.
@@pofiPenguin If regen was 100% efficient then value of regen would match value of momentum but it isn’t so momentum is more valuable by the margin of regen’s efficiency loss.
This explanation would make hybrid vehicles a total farce. ?
It always intrigues me to see drivers hurtling up to a red light and slamming the brakes on at the last moment. The same with red brake lights in front of you, if you see them why not slow down. If you don't see them stop driving. 💀
Thanks, heated seats and steering wheel are a must in an EV, you can still be very comfortable with the main heating set lower.
Nearly all your tips are well known but I still see so many drivers who ignore them, they do not anticipate the road ahead, fail to ease off the accelerator early and then brake harshly when they see standing traffic or red lights immediately in front of them.
Heated seats and steering wheel use less range than the heater?
@@BigALBoomer Yes, heated seats only use a small element that heats up just you. In my diesel car in winter, I have my heated seat on and my cabin heating with fans off and temperature set to lowest setting. I don't have climate control. This allows the engine to reach its working temperature quickest and then become more efficient. I only then once the engine has warmed-up use the cabin heater to heat the car cabin, and turn the heated seat off. Petrol and diesel engines are of course horribly inefficient when they are cold, and very polluting.
@Electric-bm7bf There is no free lunch here, yes the heated seats and wheel as you say, use the 12V system, but this is then topped up from the main traction battery so you do lose a small amount of range.
Yeah it all comes from the same place in an EV. But it’s negligible compared to the energy used to move the car most of the time. The exception is use of the resistive heating to warm the cabin this can be quite wasteful so better to use less of this wherever possible.
@@andrewharland7727 Correct My current car, heatpump heated, uses on longer distance 95% for traction (engine usage inclusing motor controler). 3 to 4% for heatpump and the rest for other electronics (as cruise control seat heating)
On short distances the energy usage for electronics and heater is muuch more than those 5%. This also comes due to the fact that EVEN the efficient EV's generate some restheat in battery and engine. That little warmer air coming from those components can make the heatpump working more efficient. But it takes 20 to 40 miles, depending tempm outside, before this efficiencies come into play.
I remember years ago that at my company we did an economy run amongst some of the staff. Same route with a mixture of town and country driving including some motorway. The same car was used for each 30 mile round trip and there was a maximum time allowed for the total trip (to stop anyone just driving slowly). The best driver acheived 86mpg and the worst only 43mpg! The only reason for the huge difference was the driving style. A lot was learnt from that lesson.
Nobody, ‘years ago’ could get 86mpg out of any car. Sounds like they nipped into a garage and lobbed some fuel in.
Were there not a couple puddle jumpers in Europe that attained 80 plus. Small hatch backs, 3 cylinder engines, 30% larger imperial gallon?
@@markandrew6572 1999 VW Lupo 3l 94mpg urban cycle. 110+ mpg achievable. I managed over 50mpg in my 1971 VW Beetle!
@@markandrew6572 Bullshit. I personally got 90-something mpg out of a small Daihatsu and someone managed 100.
Next!
@@RupertReynolds1962 what was the vehicle?
In winter i have warm clothes on so no problem lowering heat to 16-17 degrees when seat and steering wheel heat is on. Saves huge amounts of energy.
Thank you for this video. As a new EV owner, this has been immensely helpful. Regen has been a learning curve, especially when the previous owner has left it set on max regen and I wondered why it was aggressively braking itself when I took my foot off the accelerator. Looking forward to applying this advice as I absolutely love my e-Niro in the few weeks I’ve had it. Thanks again and look forward to more of your videos.
What about driving all year round with an empty roof box that you only used on that one summer holiday?
Or any exterior add-ons i.e. roof racks with accessories etc
This topic is one of the reasons why we LOVE the paddles in our Ioniq5. We can very easily shift to coast and introduce inefficiency much less often (since we don’t slowdown-then-speed-back-up) and we have been amazed how much this extends miles/kWh numbers. The other thing we do is drive behind larger vehicles or trucks on the highway and draft - big boost to miles/kWh.
My model 3 shows 118wh/km - a bit over 5mi/kwh - country based in Australia over 115,000 kms…….one pedal driving.
@@davidpearn5925 Wow that is great efficiency. I suspect it would be even better if you didnt have the constant, though small, acceleration/regen bleeding off efficiency. We sometimes click to 1 pedal in traffic just to avoid foot fatigue, but for regular driving the constant, though small, herky/jerk of 1-pedal is annoying. I have rented teslas several times from hertz just to see if it was any different than the ioniq but it felt exactly the same. The fact that tesla forces 1-pedal is one of the reasons we don’t buy them.
@@kippck3137Teslas don’t force one pedal driving, though I use it out of preference. There’s a ‘creep mode’ option that acts like a traditional auto.
I used to get behind trucks etc on my 60’s Lambretta …. Seems as though I ‘floated’ along behind it 😅
I tried getting behind trucks on a long trip assuming they eat up all the drag. I wasn't wrong 😂😂😂
Thanks and its good to hear your take on the addiction of EV Regen! It is something I've always done ie. setting Regen to a low setting because the recovery of the genetic energy of a car in motion during a coast is nearly 100% as the car covers distance whereas using Regen has efficiency losses at every stage of conversation ie. motion captured, conversion into AC electricity, rectification into DC the storage in a chemical battery. The other return trip from chemical energy to DC electrical energy, through the Inverter to AC Electricity into rotational energy into kinetic energy as the car is accelerated up to speed again. Cut out the regen middleman and coast. It's advice I often share with new EV drivers.
I've recently seen some other EV driving coverage that makes exactly the same point - you will always save more by coasting than you gain via regen, for the reasons you give. It's surprising though that pretty much every single EV review I've ever watched or read talks about turning up the regen settings to get more range. Is this because car journalists haven't studied physics?
You of course don't use regen if you don't need to, you can still of course coast with regen set to full. If you need to slow down, then regen is of course way more efficient that using the brake. I think the way the Tesla implements the regen is very natural, and there should be no reason for efficiency drops by having set to full. I mean it's pretty simple really, let you foot of the accelerator more, you will regen more, let it off less then you will regen less. This has absolutely nothing to do with coasting, as in both cases you can still do that.
All true unless and until you use the brakes, the moment you need to use brakes (apply pads to disc) all of that efficiency goes down the drain, so coasting down a hill periodically slowing down by usint the brakes (applying pads to dic) is clearly going to be less efficient than using regen to moderate your speed....
You can coast with a medium or high regen setting by simply not lifting your foot all the way off the accelerator and still get the benefit of regen when you need it, this method provides the absolute optimum efficiency, you lose nothing controlling the coast via the pedal v turning it off or down. You can't do the opposite when you have regen turned down or off which inevitably leads to more physical braking and every time you put your foot on the brake you are wasting energy. Apart from a bi-monthly planned moderate application of the brakes from 50mph to ensure they are kept in good order I doubt I have touched the brake pedal more than 1/2 a dozen times over 11,000 miles in combined freeway and city traffic conditions.
I have a lifetime efficiency of 177 Wh/mile and often sit in the low 150's for extended periods in good weather.
Good tip on the use of regen vs coasting and it is counter intuitive that coasting is the better option most of the time. I know you can coast in b mode by moderating the pedal but as a new ev driver you have to learn how to do this so best to keep it in normal mode. Or save B mode for around town and use normal on your motorway runs.
Great tips. Our BMW i4 has a nice dead zone where you can choose to glide even in one pedal mode. But it was nice to have a low regen setting to learn how well coasting works. Now that we've had it for a few months, I've gotten more proficient at finding the coast point, occasionally scanning to the power meter to confirm I'm neither regen braking, nor adding power when on a down grade. But keeping it in B (one pedal mode) means that I can really dial in a bit of regen as I pick up speed or anticipate a slow up ahead.
A charging tip: I know a lot of retired people who have forgone installing an EVSE and instead rely on their very low power (110V, 1.6 kW) included emergency charging cable for all their home charging. But most EVs use several hundred watts to power the AC->DC inverter while charging, so spending many more hours charging very slowly actually wastes up to 30% more power than charging more quickly with a more powerful EVSE (7-11 kW) in a shorter time. It seems trivial, but these charging losses are worth assessing and addressing.
I always wondered about this would there be more charging losses using the granny charger - thanks for clarifying. The other aspect is time. How long would it take to replace the miles used on the commute and would it even be an option at all.
@@andrewharland7727we’re waiting for a 7KW wall charger installation later this month so have been stuck with the granny charger since getting our first EV about 3 weeks ago. Connected to a standard UK socket I’m seeing around 2.6KW and, while slow, it does add an appreciable percentage overnight.
Got the standard midnight to 5am discounted EV tariff and last night went from 65% SoC to 80% easily in that window, with an air temperature of near freezing (car was iced this morning).
For a short commute that would probably be workable, more so if you are happy to charge outside of an overnight EV tariff.
Regular 110vac plugs are rated 15amps.but the load should not exceed 80% which means you have 110x12 watts 1.32kw likewise 220vac on a 60 amp breaker which is also limited to 80% is 220x48=11watts the lower number come from 40 or 50 amps all with max 80% why 80% because some load in particular motors spike higher on start. I would suggest they all have the same % of losses.
@@andrewbell8837 I think you meant 11kW for level 2 and 1.32 for level 1. The point about percentage of losses isn't true if you charge for 2 hours vs. 20 hours, because the on-board inverter goes to sleep for 18 hours in the case of level 2. While it could be true that you spread your conversion losses across more hours with level 1 and percentage lost is presumed to be the same, what people who have tested this have actually found is that you have OVERHEAD of the powered on status of the on-board inverter for 10 times as many hours, and if that powered on state runs at a minimum of 400 watts/hr, you'd get an additional 18 hours where that underpowered inverter is wasting juice. If you don't believe me, google it. Level 1 charging wastes more power on e-GMP and Bolt. I'm not sure it's been proven on other cars. I once heard a Fiat 500e owner who measured his charging losses claim their were 20%. No doubt he was slow charging with Level 1 and the minimum inverter power was dwarfing the presumed AC-DC conversion losses.
That is dead wrong. I can monitor the charging power to my Enyaq usin g a granny charger and losses are minimal.
A huge thank you for this. I just bought an EV. I already know what to do prior to driving my EV for the first time. Very clear and concise video with a lot of important info. 🙏🏻
Given the relatively low cost of fuel for an EV when charging at home, and the torquey nature of EV's, if I'm not on a long trip, I 'enjoy' the acceleration of the EV, away from lights, out of corners and roundabouts. It's lots of fun and catches so many ice's by surprise.
Then, if I'm on a long trip and want to minimise the total journey time, I apply most of EVM's methods to drive efficently.
thank you for educating about regen, people seem to think regen is 'free money' and more is better. It helps to explain that the energy that you try to regenerate has already been taken out of the battery during acceleration and that regen only gets somewhere about 50-75% of the energy back into the battery.
The other thing about driving with zero regen is the fact that is actually educates the driver into driving smootly and planning ahead, like taking your foot of the pedal and rolling up to a red light. I drive 9-10 km/kWh in my 2018 Ioniq in the summer and you can't get an EV today that matches it, which is why I have put in a reservation for an Aptera that does 16 km/kWh
I can get 5.2mi/kwh (8.5km/kwh) in summer in my Hyundai Kona 2021, the efficiency of the Ioniq is unmatched though.
I can do that in my Skoda Enyaq. My Leaf is even better with up to around 5.6 miles per kwh. You just have to drive carefully and it helps to have a nice long journey without too many hills and twisty bits.@@MrNeeds
I've been driving this way for my entire life. I mean slow acceleration and deceleration and anticipating the road ahead.
Thanks for explaination of regen and hiw best to use it.
Thanks for the excellent tips! I am new to EV driving and getting myEV9 today! Can’t wait !
Thank you, you are saying for most people one pedal driving is less efficient than any other mode.
The problem with driving slow toward traffic lights is that it annoys other people who want to race to the lights so that can look at their phones while stationary.
Finally, there are those who can afford 40K plus on their EV dont really care how much it costs to run the car.
Dont forget Tesla dont have regen on their brake pedal.
Most people with a £40k EV do care as they’re almost all on finance.
@@ElectricVehicleMan Rubbish (sorry!) I've spent c.40K on my EV (OK, on 0% interest), and have Home Charging, I'm not really counting the pennies. I do the gradual slowing down to red lights, and I'm very aware that following drivers are probably getting frustrated (silly, I know...)
@@stnicolastaplow4096 Now put yourself in a position where outgoings shoot up and money is suddenly tight. You’ll then be doing the easy wins like this to save potentially hundreds a year.
@@ElectricVehicleMan it costs me about, I don’t know, about £5 for a typical 60% top-up. Of course, things could suddenly go downhill, but I’m a lot less concerned about my EV’s efficiency than I was about my 3.5 litre BMW, my previous car (btw, your BMW comment in this video was a bit lazy…)
@@stnicolastaplow4096 It’s a bit of fun.
And true quite frankly.
Only a Yorkshireman is doing money saving on xmas eve
😂
When I were a lad, we were so poor, we couldn't even afford xmas eve! 🤣
@@martinswitzer6534 Couldn't afford Xmas eve? You were lucky... 😂
that's nowt! We were so poor, we became atheists so we didn't have to have Christmas, or Christmas eve!
When things get tough, he'll still be driving a car, and you'll be at the bus stop.
Regen is MUCH more efficient than friction braking but in certain situations coasting is slightly more efficient than regen because regen is a lossy process when it captures and then reuses the energy.
I'm not sure whether you are agreeing with EVM or contradicting him. Yes, regen is more efficient than friction braking but I think EVM was talking about another option. I can't speak for Taycan, as I have no experience of that, but I do have 60,000 miles of experience in ETron 55s'. This can regen when coasting and regens when using the brakes (except in emergencies when the friction brakes come into play). IMO this method of regen is far more normal to new EV buyers who are, sometimes put of by the your driving (coming from an ICE car) to one pedal driving. Driving the car normally but getting regen through NORMAL use of the brakes is quite productive and, in my opinion, far easier than trying to adapt to one pedal driving. In an ETron you can, if you want, use the two stage regen paddles which will, if you plan it, slow you down to 3-4 miles an hour which in most cases would be sufficient if that is the way you want to do it. As others have said, the best efficiencies come from good forward planning and not slowing down too much only then having to accelerate too much to get back up to speed.
I agree with @philartley, but it depends on if foot braking (with regen off/low) really does trigger decent amount of regen charging (??) - it doesn't feel like it to me, nor is that what the regen/charging display tells me. Does anyone know for sure if this applies to cars other than the likes of Taycan?
Personally, I love one-pedal driving in towns and on country roads - so much easier and smoother (less aggressive accelerator). I do turn regen off/down on motorways for exactly the reasons given by EVMan here, but I disagree with telling new EV users to turn it off completely, at all times.
@@robertduncan5912it doesn't matter whether the deceleration happened because you put your foot on the brake pedal or the car was doing it for you because regen was turned up - it's the same deceleration either way with the same regen effect. I can see 100% that it happens in my Kia Niro. It has an energy dial on the dash with a section below the line showing regen strength. The needle goes below the line when I brake. Only when I brake hard so the needle hits the bottom (max regen) will the car then think of using the friction brakes. Otherwise the friction brakes hardly get used. Which is why at my 20k service, the report said my pads were only 8% worn. Even though I set the regen level off or low.
@@Richard-io9xe Are you sure about this? My "regen meter" in Ioniq 5 shows very little regen when I foot brake with regen off. If your brake pads show little wear and if you have regen off, then that is "proof of the pudding" for your car, but I'm not convinced it works like that in all EVs.
So glad to hear your view on regen. My best way to explain why sailing is better than one pedal driving is comparing to a rollar coaster. A rollar coaster sails through its rails purely on the kinetic energy from its high starting point. Its also usually a safer driving mode as it intuitively makes you plan ahead and drive more carefully
Learning single pedal driving is an art and a game changer. So much more efficient and less stress.
just note not all cars do regen when using the breake pedale
so you may need to change regen setting to match your driving style
I love my Tesla one pedal mode… it manages to be optimal in every situation, maximazing roll whell relieving the accelerator or doing regen or braking when fully releasing the accelerator. So look for a good regen implementation and get used to it… you will love it, and only use brakes for emergencies.
I'm always in B mode and find it easy to lift off the throttle only as little as necessary to maintain the minimum gap to vehicle in front in slowing traffic. Also got pretty good at judging when to lift completely when I know I've got to stop, maybe at a red light, and then arrive at the stop line just as the car slows to minimum speed. Except in an emergency, this is the only time I touch the brake pedal (to activate autohold). Another advantage to `B` mode is when you need to make an emergency stop you are already slowing significantly the moment you lift your foot and some time before you get your foot pressing down on the brake - this must give a shorter stopping distance. As a bit of a nerd, I used to get home in an IC car and occasionally feel the front wheel / disc and be surprised just how hot they were even after a gentle drive - I get home in an EV and they're always stone cold. Open to discussion, but if you never slow too much and never touch the brake, it must be more economical, mustn't it?
Sound thinking. Thanks for the 2023 content and all the best for 2024!
For the past 4.5yrs I've owned a classic 28kWh Ioniq and love it. The paddle regen is what I use there is no one pedal driving mode and glad there isn't. I use the paddles to adjust my speed and use coast mode alot. Great video and although my car doesn't have heated seats or steering wheel I agree and find it just as good having the temp a half a degree or degree lower gives more range. The driver only mode doesn't save alot maybe 1-2km I find. I think the racing to the lights is the yobbo thing to do so we won't stop those people they will continue to drive like that no matter what fuel powers their car.
That ioniq is a brilliant car and really easy to get high miles per kilowatt hour out of. I managed 7.6 miles per kWh several times
Great video for beginners. I have driving an EV6 over three years and use the paddle shifters to change the regeneration settings on the go. I rarely use the brake pedal to slow down, except to occasionally clean the rotors and exercise the calipers. On the EV6, the hydraulic braking system is completely independent. When regen is set to zero, the brakes will generate heat and waste energy. Your regen advice is helpful to for vehicles that do not easily allow "on the fly" adjustments. All of your other suggestions are spot on and can make a significant difference with saving energy.
Have to disagree with you about using regen, I drive my Nissan Leaf in B mode most of the time and find it gives me best efficiency, 40 years as a driving instructor I drive like I taught, road reading and advanced planning and timing the easing off correctly in relation to hazards to minimise use of the brakes. Yes I agree regen can be a bit harsh but only if you let off the accelerator completely, if you feather the accelerator the progress can be precisely what you want it to be while getting decent amounts of regen.
One thing you omitted was how much regen level changes with battery SOC, in my Leaf the regen is pretty much identical in D or B mode above 90% and gets progressively more the lower the battery goes more so in B than D.
I do very occasionally used D in preference to B mode on long gentle down gradients where easing off completely produces no speed loss so very efficient which in B would pull the speed down too much.
I drive as you do, but what EVM said is true. As you said you feather the accelerator which means you are often not using regen, in D you would be feathering the brakes. I use one pedal driving as I live in London with heavy traffic and I find it easier than moving my foot from one pedal to the next. However on a longer fast run I don't use it because it is easier to relax your leg without losing too much speed. Also on a long run with heavy regen on your foot is fixed in one position for along time which I find mote fatiguing.
@@HangingShoes If you're spending a lot of time maintaining the same accelerator position then use cruise control.
That way requires more precision. Not everyone has that so this is the ‘easiest’ default.
@@ElectricVehicleMan I don't know of any EVs which don't have cruise control, when it's engaged and the car meets a downhill gradient the cruise control holds the set speed with regen, if the car starts to go down a severe incline with say a fairly full battery the cruise control can't hold the speed, not enough regen, if that happens in my Leaf the set CC speed on the instrument panel flashes.
@@steve-zschannel2729 I meant right foot precision, not cc.
Many of your points are valid for ICE cars.
On regen - I love regen for corners, the ability to vary regen and "slow" into a bend without having to hit the brakes is brilliant for a good stable (ok, usually fast) exit, and at this time of year with slippery roads the added braking effect is very useful. Currently driving an Enyaq, does a brilliant job for my 90% commuting miles and preheat in the winter is awesome.
I followed a National Express coach for over 100 miles recently, sitting in its slip-stream, whilst taking advantage of its Wi-Fi. When you drive a Fiat 500 which is as aero dynamic as a brick, it makes a huge difference
Like you were able to pedal that fast for over 100 miles, lol 🤣
jk
Yep I’ve discovered the slow lane particularly if it’s a headwind.
Lol
To be close enough to get much advantage from slip streaming is really too close… adaptive cruise control might react quite fast though 🤷
@@JohnR31415 at fifty you don’t need to be that close to avoid a 80mph air speed.
Thanks for the video, I have been watching you for a while and always appreciate your comments. As a fellow Yorkshireman i was particularly pleased to see you driving around the town I was born in, Baildon, but left for sunnier climes in 1995.
Keep up the good work.
Andy, BYD Seal owner since nov 30th.
I am jealous. I REALLY want a BYD Seal.
Amen, Amen, Amen, and Amen.
I'm a hybrid driver, and I find that charge management is as big a factor in hybrid fuel economy as it is in EV range. I have used all of these techniques (except pre-heating) to squeeze excellent economy out of my Honda Accord hybrid. For one 2500-hundred-mile summer stretch, I was able to get 60 MPG (3.9 L/HKm) out of a 3900-pound (1770-kg) sedan with a US EPA rating of 47 MPG. A big factor seems to be coasting rather than using auto-regen. although I have to shift to neutral to make that work. It's always more economical to use your kinetic energy to coast (i.e gain distance directly) than to to store that kinetic energy in a battery, where you can use maybe 75% of it to gain distance under power later.
When, as I hope, I become an EV driver, I intend to follow your lead.
Thank you so much for all the tips. It’s is very informative.
I totally agree with what you say. I never understand people around me seeing a red light and overtaking me just to stop. Unfortunately here in Germany for what ever reason the lights aren’t choreographed so that when you keep driving a steady speed you basically arrive to a green light and before you arrive to the next light it will be green. It’s the exact opposite. You drive from one read light to another. No idea why.
I tend to have my regen on max. I’m used to it so I know how the car behaves but I agree that sometimes one slows down more that intended and looses the momentum. I’ll def try to lower the setting.
Also what I never understood is why almost no EV has a full regen off so it’s only coasting.
With my Mx 30 that what I loved and I wouldn’t have to try to have my gas pedal in the middle so to have sort of coasting style of driving.
I coast in neutral when I recognize a stretch of road in front of me where my momentum will maintain speed for a good distance before I will have to break or slow down
The distance gained from Regen will not equal the distance that I got from coasting because there is always losses in energy conversion
I then switch to drive when I get closer to where I will have to stop to slow down quicker and get some regen
Great video. I have a problem with my memory due to illness and I come back to this for a refresher every couple of months.
Thanks for a no nonsense video. You’re one of a very few EV channels which doesn’t get all preachy and smug about EVs. I’m an ICE driver and have no intention of changing ( and yes I have driven EVs ). So many channels delight in ridiculing ICE drivers for not embracing EVs rather than accepting it’s a matter of personal choice.
You’re brilliant. I’ve been following you for a while as I’ve been planning an electric car for ages. I got my first Leaf on Monday and I’ve been wondering about all these things. So thank you, perfect timing.
I’ve just noticed this was posted 6 months ago. Ha. TH-cam must have picked something up from my searching.
Happy New Year to You and your family. Thanks for all your videos.
Hi EVM, greetings from Oxford. Some good tips here, I think the main takeaway is ‘finesse’. I would add that your instruments can help, most cars can give you dynamic fuel consumption data on the instrument cluster at the press of a few controls, this gives useful feedback that can improve your driving style. I have a BMW i3, which also has a ‘swingometer’ on the drivers display - very useful.
I think regen is about 75% efficient. But there's also tyre wind resistance and friction in any journey up and back down a hill. So you'd not get back 75% of what you started with.
Thanks for this. Clarified the regen thing for me. I always drive on minimum regen as it feels more natural to me so it is nice to be reassured this is not clobbering my range. Unfortunately my wife goes from freezing at 21 degrees to melting at 21.5 so is always messing with my air con!
It is clobbering your range... this is the most ass backwards advice I've heard in years of being super active in EV space.
Tesla even went as far as to entirely forbid reducing regen - you just always have max. Specifically because of dumb takes like this, which afterwards complain about the car ubderperforming in terms of range.
@@pofiPenguinno. The best for the effiency is to coast as much as possible and only after that if you need to brake then you use regen. Thats the way if you want to maximise the range
The hugely efficient Ionic is most efficie t if the paddles are worked like changing gear
Costing when you can reg ,1,2 then 3 instaed of brakes
Thank you for your video. Your comments about regen vs coasting looks very reasonable, especially for a person who is going to switch from ICE to EV.
on motorways the simple way is cruise control as it will adjust as required I found, I drove from Birmingham to Newcastle mainly on CC and got an average of 3.2kwh in not great weather. Sadly coming back it was pissing down all the way and went down to 2.8 !
Not an EV owner yet, but my next car will be. Really enjoy your videos. As a lorry driver, we are trained to keep the wheels rolling as much as possible. Back in 2012 i completed my Smith System training, which goes into mainly how to improve fuel efficiency, and reduce accidents. You can imagine the savings if every driver on a fleet, drove a bit more efficient. Those few litres a day, add up over a week, month and year.
It's the same for EV's. The more efficient you drive, the further you can go.
The Smith System originated from the US. Worth looking in to
Keep up the good work 👏
I find the best regen setting (in my 2020 Kia e-Niro) is 1. You can't turn it off completely but 1 gives you about the same slowing down action as lifting off in a petrol car. I find this the most natural and also means that it doesn't take me by surprise when I switch to my other ICE cars. The brake pedal uses regen anyway so it doesn't change the efficiency.
The only benefit to having regen set to maximum is that you would get a little slowing down in an emergency. It takes most people around 0.2 of a second to move their foot from accelerator to brake pedal. At 70mph, that's over 6 meters. So you would shave off a little in an emergency brake but it's probably very marginal.
My Volvo has OPD - either on or off, no other choices. I like it as I have driven a lot of autos and towed horses ... so the principle of feathering the throttle ... easy and gradual slowing with smooth even acceleration come naturally.
I tend to think of Volvo One Pedal Drive as being infinitely variable, with the caveat that variation of the accelerator pedal produces a predictable degree of regeneration, from coasting to stopping - no adjustment needed. Even in non-OPD mode, the car uses regeneration to slow down until it hits 1/3G, with the exception of ABS or ASC intervention. In Adaptive Cruise, the car also uses Regen to control the speed. Given the XC40s very unslippery .32 drag coefficient and my car’s permanent AWD (2024s are different), I’m quite happy with up to 400km of usable range in the summer. EVs require a change in habits. Take your time, enjoy the scenery, chill out when it’s time to recharge. Life isn’t about how quick you get from A to B or comparing your car to everyone else’s.
In my E-Golf I use max regen and wherever possible I use cruise control, particularly in 20mph limits and keep my speed as constant and smooth as possible
The drivers behind must hate you 😂
@@1HeatWalk because he is obey the 20mph rule and saving money?
I'm not an EV driver yet, but I am a fan. The one misconception I had about regen was that it didn't occur to me that the brake pedal engaged the regen before it engaged the brake pads. I always thought you need to have the regen slow the car down upon releasing the accelerator in order to benefit from it. Thanks for that info.
Some cars do that, some don’t. Just to be clear.
This may be a daft question but ….when using levels of regen above the off/lowest, do the brake lights come on? It seems a little dangerous to have the level of braking that high regen gives without letting traffic behind know that you are slowing down.
@@IanMayer on cars now, yes. Very few don’t.
I think this needs more research on what "foot braking" actually does in terms of regen when regen is off/low. There seems to be some confusion as to whether the car automatically starts breaking with regen, even when regen is off/low. (this needs to be answered, and in my EV - Ioniq 5 - it certainly doesn't feel like it operates that way).
No good telling people to turn it off cos there will always be regen as a default if that's not the case in many cars, otherwise you lose a major advantage of EVs: less wear of brakes pads and shedding of brake dust.
@@IanMayerYes, it's mandated that brake lights must come on when the braking force exceeds a set level. It doesn't matter how the braking is achieved, its the rate of deceleration that will determine if the lights come on.
I totally understand and follow your point about forwarding planning. However, when I take over in front of a red light, it's usually because I want to get ahead in the line of cars ahead of me in total because I know that over time and the line of lights ahead that will save me time off my journey so that can be a part of forward planning, too 🤪 not saying it's more efficient but there you go 🎉
2 points. Tires - middle tread wearing faster? Lower pressure to even it
Regen braking - max in town, min on highway sweet - rolling smooth
Fantastic advice. Especially about tyres and efficient use of coasting.
You're great man! I'm from Germany and I love your videos! I am an efficiency-nerd with a bad right ankle-joint and I just don't get this hype around one-pedal-driving. It puts unnecessary cycles on the battery, it stresses the driver, it increases reaction time because one probably loses the habit of having the foot hover over the brake pedal in a potentially dangerous situation. The advent if EVs does a lot to uncover the amount of ignorance on physics in the general population. There really is a need for a basic science education in our societies!
Love my flappy paddles on my Kia e-niro as can fine tune the re-gen on the fly .
I recently bought my first EV, a 2014 Tesla. I Bought it to take advantage of the solar system that came with the house we bought in California a couple of years ago. The car we bought had ony 61,000 miles on it with an average lifetime energy consumption on it of 336 watt hour/mile which translates to 33.6 kwh per 100 miles. I have driven it about 1700 miles with an average consumtion of 269 wh/mile. That's 20% less, than the previous one owner, and I am doing mostly freeway driving, with the air conditioning on, with some signicant hills on my route. I drive more miles than my range estimate goes down.
The point about the relationship between power used to accelerate vs the amount reclaimed by regen is key. As you say it’s very easy to scrub of speed unintentionally, which hurts more than the regen benefit. On my Ioniq 5 the paddles allow you to manually engage max regen by holding one paddle even when you are zero-regen setting and I’ve found that arrangement far better than anything else, especially when you are properly planning ahead to maintain momentum.
I like your comment on regen. As a new ev driver I was trying to get use to one pedal driving but couldn’t help but think I was losing on coasting which is beneficial, thanks again
A few times I've seen "stay below 65mph" when maybe it thinks I'd be touch and go to reach destination. When the supercharger is a bit off the route/ not familiar, slowing down to not have to charge is better!
I’m an ex coach driver and forward planning was the way I was taught for the comfort of passengers so my ev I really love!
I always use the lowest regen setting and use the brake pedal as a dynamic regen, e.g. the physical brakes will never be used. The positive thing is also that those driving behind me don’t have to look at blinking brake lights but rather constantly on ones, which is much more nice for them
The most important thing: When you brake you lose (potential) energy. Regen brakes lose less energy, but it is still a waste. Efficient drivers don’t brake often and don’t brake hard. Every time you press brake (or lift up leg to regen) think about why you had to do that. Next time before the same situation you press less gas pedal. Eventually you notice that you don’t need to brake much at all.
The I ly time I use regen in my E-Niro is going down steep hills, fully agree with you about regen. No accelerator is less lower lost than accelerating back up to speed or on slow accents.
The A/C compressor run for both cooling and heating in gas vehicles
In heating the AC adjust the amount of heating from full heating and also to dry the air to prevent the windows from fogging in the winter because the heat is only high
EVs heating output is adjustable though it also needs the AC to dry the air
Note re regen and using the break pedal. Not all cars offer blended braking options. Tesla AFAICT don't and using the break pedal is always 100% mechanical break being applied. It will apply regen only on when you release pressure on the accellerator.
use the accelerator less in the first place rather than using it and regening only a % of the lost energy later. basics but so many don't seem to get it.
Another for me is making usie of heated seats and steerring wheel if only the driver is in the car and less heating. Also, selecting an EV with a heat pump when purchasing.
Seems like EV owners have no life a car is transport nothing else and Electric if neither cheap or fun !!
Great mention of forward planning, which is what advanced drivers call Acceleration Sense. Better to sit back and cruise an average speed than to join the traffic caterpillars (clusters of cars having to accelerate and brake due to being bunched up below reaction times).
Also if you've got dual or quad zone heating & you're in the car on your own, there's no point in heating/cooling the unoccupied zones.
Personally I'd say tyre pressures should be fortnightly ideally (guilty of not doing it often enough myself) rather than monthly, but that may be because I don't have TPMS on my current Dino-juice car.
I agree with most of your points. That is one of my issues with a new Tesla Model 3 where you can no longer adjust the regen.
I have found that using regenerative braking is fine but instead of taking your foot all the way off the accelerator, just ease it off depending on how much you want to slow dowm, I turn it off when going uphill and back on going downhill, the other thing is to look ahead and slow early but gently which gives you the choice of slowing to a stop or keeping going, I have seen people who stamp on the accelerator and stamp on the brakes, even going through a gorge with a lot of corners, I tend to accelerate gently and brake gently but I accelerate before I am ou of the corner and brake deep into the corner, that is just as quick but much smoother.
I have learned how to drive efficiently through smooth acceleration and braking/regen. However the biggest difference between 3 miles per Kwh and 4 miles per Kwh is temperature.
Cold weather makes a massive difference in battery performance.
Depends on the battery management (heating) during the travel.
When driving longer distances I have noticed that the difference is less than wehn doing a lot of short distances.
But also the drag (air resistence) is 1% more every 3 degrees colder. The drag cannot be reduced.
Also with fog and rain we need to push more weight out of the way with the car making it less efficient.
Excellent video for newbies and idiots. I have had EVs for 6 years and can confirm that for the best milage 0 regen and gentle right foot is the way to go. I may use 3 in heavy traffic but I have the advantage that my new Kona as auto regen so I default it to 0 and it will increase it if it detects heavy traffic. Heating 19 is more than enough, you can always use the heated seats and steering wheel to top up and in summer the aircon is set to 22. Last summer my Gom showed 362 miles and was only out by about 30
Very good tips on practicing energy management. I only use the " CHILL" mode now. No more rapid accelerating, and yes, I can see a difference in the amount of energy used. I love the ability of Tesla cars to drive using the one pedal system. I can literally ho for weeks without ever stepping on the break pedal. That should see a payoff in decreased costs on break pads. Thanks to all for additional energy management tips left I'm the comments. That three 65s one was awesome.
It is good practice to use the brakes regularly to clean the discs and prevent the calipers seizing.
Honestly everything aside for regen applies to every cars. Anticipation is probably number 1..not only will you drive more smoothly (and if you have passengers they'll appreciate it) but you save on fuel and reduce particles emissions from your breaks (and use them less).
It's really a win win.
And not because you're using gasoline that you should drive at the max speed limit on highway either. Running at 110 instead of 130 makes a world of difference on the tank.
Sorry I had to re do the start of this post as you are correct about epedal driving although there isn't alot in it, winter if driving a long way you are best doing it in one go, For example I did 80 miles back from Bridlington with 2 20 minutes stops and the motor and battery cooled down,
It took 20 more miles range than going where I didn't stop,
I think pre heating would reduce any loss.
I think most people think they have to get to next set of lights as quick as possible. And wait again lol.
I also have electric bike and drivers in 20mph areas seem to need to get past even when there is a car in front so they can't go anywhere
The key i believe is forward anticipation. I think if you use that in any car your driving experience will be more relaxed and more efficient. An by the way i drive in eco and b mode everywhere and see virtually no difference in the leaf. The only downside is disc brakes corrode with lack of use. Believe tesla pads touch discs every so often which should help that.
Love one pedal driving in my Bolt, I get between 4.3 - 4.6 miles per/kwh. Pretty happy with the results.
Well done for tackling the subject and explaining it for the layman far better than I've ever managed to. I've seen people saying they were uncomfortably low on charge so turned on maximum regeneration in order to conserve as much power as possible, and I had to give up trying to explain that it was counterproductive.
When you see traffic lights ahead change to red, then come off the gas & coast & brake gently to a stop without crawling. Reading the road ahead is good driving, avoids accidents or getting caught up in one. Oh, please use your indicators at roundabouts, that helps drivers to know they can judge the roundabouts speeds.
We drive in "D" mode in our ID3 all the time, I think its the most efficient way and nicest drive :)
I spoke to a guy at BMW and he said that they were seeing EV brake pads lasting 100k miles, because people were using B mode a lot. I had mine checked after a year (10k miles) and they had barely lost anything. Mind-blowing.
The real benefit of regen is in snow and ice when the car slows/stops without sliding
If you’re in those conditions you shouldn’t be driving. Either fit winter tyres or chains. As you’ve lost your ability to steer out of trouble or brake hard. I’ve lived in snow country and experienced this, which is why I like my chains. If you are ever in the US, stock up on some z-chain chains as they’re way better than the stuff they sell in the UK. And my scandi friends say “just use winter tyres”. Never tried that
Great indepth of information. I'm due to be going full electric very soon. So very helpful thank you.
Relaying on regen to break tends to smooth down the acceleration and breaking cycle. Without one pedal driving, i trend to accelerate and break more heavily when i need to stop. When i drive on a highway, i use cruise control which keeps my speed constant.
I think using regen braking has improved my driving significantly. I do drive with much more finesse. The on screen feedback is useful. I hardly ever use the brake pedal in my Tesla. For me not using it (I rarely drive on a motorway as there are no motorways in my part of East Anglia) is a sign that I am driving well. Avoiding hard acceleration and anticipating the need to slow down or stop by easing off gradually. I do use the brakes from time to time but mainly to ensure that they are still efficient and not covered in “debris”. Did you factor in to your thinking the cost of replacing brake pads/discs? I’m not expecting to have to replace mine before I move to my next car. I have had the current one for 30 months.
Apart from the fact that preheating the battery while still plugged in to the home charger saves range, does it have other benefits for the car? My husband drives more and keeps his car plugged in every night with a scheduled middle of the night charge, and I only need to charge my car every few days. So, should I go out 10 minutes ahead of my journey on the cold morning and plug it in to preheat the battery? Or just preheat without plugging it in? Thank you 😊
@@glohora Plug in if you want the extra range. Otherwise just use the cars battery to make the car more comfortable.
Great video. I hadn’t realised that the brakes can use regen for the initial braking effect. I’ll bear that in mind when I buy my first EV.
All EV, except Tesla, rivian and lucid have bekended brakes. Regen on the brake pedal, it's wonderful
That's what I've generally desired, that the brake pedal will command regen first before the friction brakes (after all, that's what trains with rheostatic/regenerative braking have been doing for a while!), and the accelerator not being one pedal, which I find too fiddly for my liking (and which I'll try and use the cruise control where it's feasible, which does regen to maintain speed)
I leave regen on high in FL, you're always having to slow down quickly. I almost never use the friction brakes. I'm good at modulation and LOVE one pedal driving, so easy. Getting 240 watts per mile out of a MYP at slow speeds, slower the better. Sometimes only 220 in congested traffic.
I’ve a full charge every day . Don’t use it all . I find just put the boot
down and enjoy the experience
Getting my first EV (ID Buzz) in a couple of weeks so good tips 😊
Diesel and petrol (gasoline) cars, to a smaller degree, are affected by the use of heater too. Modern thermostats are working to keep the engine warm when it's cold, for emmisions & efficiency, so it's worth conserving heat on very cold days.
Have you had the EV implant , do you wake up look at the temp outside and have a melt down , if so your brain has been over taken .
As far as regenerative braking, is it fair and easier to say that with an electric motor when you press the accelerator pedal it drives the motor( I know that was obvious) and when you lift your foot of the accelerator your electric motor becomes a generator and puts charge back into the car batteries
Regen on the highway is almost useless and your explanation is spot on but for city driving learning to use regen as brakes absolutely adds regen power back the the battery. I hardly use my brakes at all.
I think that might be covered under the fact that the brake pedal (in theory) uses regen where it can - at least the "real" point being made, I took to be that maintaining speed is preferable to braking (regenerative or otherwise), then if you do need to lose speed, regen is preferable to capture that power than friction. (It does make a notable difference as well, travelling in the early mornings, where traffic is light and I can maintain speed more easily, uses less battery than during busy times, where braking and reaccelerating is frequent)
Not an EV owner yet, but your point about Regen at the 8 minute mark is why I think all EV's should have flappy paddles to adjust Regen.
My thought would be to have it on light but use the paddles to increase Regen depending on the circumstances. In my area, there are plenty of flat suburban roads, but some suburbs I drive through are in very hilly areas. In order to keep under the 50km/h speed limit when going down these roads (some are very long), you have to ride your brakes. If I lived in those suburbs, I would be going through brake pads more than an average driver.
So having flappy paddles would be so much easier to change on the fly then one where you have to reach/look down for a button or dial, or even worse, go through a touch screen menu.
But I'm not an EV driver so maybe my thoughts are rubbish but the widely varying roads (flat vs hilly) just within a 30 minute drive is why I would want easy change Regen levels.
Agree entirely. I swop levels like i used to change gears to control speed
Use Adaptive cruise control or Speed limiter. On my LEAF the speed limiter applies regen braking, as needed, to keep the speed to the set limit.
Most EV use regenerative braking when pressing the brake pedal, acting as the flappy things you describe.
@@davidbutt406 I would love to see some evidence of this.
I'm not saying it's not true, but perhaps it could be urban legend. Eg people read your comment, accept it as true and pass it on.
What would be great is if a EV channel had access to a number of cars for testing and a garage with a hoist.
Take off the wheels so the calipers are visible. Turn on the car and accelerate and then use the brake pedal. See at what time after the brake pedal is pressed that the brakes engage.
Like I said, I am not saying your statement is true or false, but would like to see the testing (and not just on one model of car) validating these claims.
Going down a steep hill that high levels of regen braking could keep your speed in check - if using the brake pedal as you describe then how do we know how much regen is braking and how much physical pads? Maybe regen only happens for a very small travel of the brake pedal?? Who knows, hence why it would be good to see some type of testing.
I think some cars do blend regen and friction brakes on the brake pedal which is why people find them grabby and hard to moderate. I don’t think my mini does. I think the regen is used when you lift off the accelerator but if you use the brake pedal then it is always applying the friction brakes.
Thank you so much for your helpful information in this video, I'm new to EV driving after recently purchasing a Vauxhall Ampera on a 15 plate, which is replacing my 2009 Toyota Avensis tourer 2.0 d-4d (which is a brilliant car in it's own right) I'm learning more about my EV every day and trying to get the most mileage out of a charge, but finding on occasion I have to select "hold" mode to revert to the 1.4 petrol generator to ensure it can reach my location without depleting the battery fully. Will definitely take on board your tips now and see how things improve over the coming weeks and months. 👍
I would say use cruise control wherever possible, I average 4 plus per kWh. It stops speed creep, lots of people are getting caught for speeding in 20mph zones because of creep, so set it to 22mph most speedometers are 20% out. It will save money on your fuel consumption, and you are not going to get any endorsements. On the motorway I set the cruise to 65 or 70 then as I come off on the ramp which in most cases is downhill or level I find it is rare to be uphill let regen improve consumption at that point.
Regen: Some EVs do not mix regen with the friction brakes ie the brake pedal only engages friction brakes on Teslas. The energy in a body in motion is 1/2MV² so there is exponentially more regen available at higher speeds. There is also exponentially more drag at higher speeds. So if you coast, you get no regen at all and drag uses up your energy. Better to use regen at high speeds. I've not seen any quantitative analysis but I estimate that you can get ~70% of your energy back
loving it !! really nice so far.... may I give a suggestion for a next video ? what do you think an Ev should have in terms of equipment, nowadays ? Ex fast charging at 100 kw minimum, heat pump... etc , and what is useless and not needed.... have a nice day. cheers !