Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

[Brian P]

Long and detailed video about EV brake lights (or lack thereof).

TL: DW Many vehicles with regen don't activate brake lights when using regen. Brake lights are tied to friction brakes only. EU explicitly banned brake lights with regen. They finally passed a revision that brake lights must activate above a certain deceleration which makes sense. The person behind you doesn't care if you are using friction brakes or regen to quickly stop.

Bolt gen 1 brake lights activated with the regen-brake tab on the steering wheel (great feature, by the way) and with one-pedal driving above a certain deceleration threshold, but they didn't stay when the car was stopped unless your foot was on the brake pedal (e.g. didn't stay on in a hill-hold situation). Bolt gen 2 brake lights stay on when the car is stopped (by one-pedal-driving or by hill-hold) and this is more intuitive to other drivers - although Bolt gen 2 brake lights are the ones that they moved down to the bumper, separate from the tail lights.

Keep in mind that with any old-school manual transmission vehicle, if you were stopped on level ground in neutral without your foot on the brake pedal (common), the brake lights aren't on in that situation, either. The Bolt gen 1 lack of brake lamps when stopped by hill-holder is analogous to that.

 

[GreyGhost]

Bolt gen 1 brake lights activated with the regen-brake tab on the steering wheel (great feature, by the way) and with one-pedal driving above a certain deceleration threshold, but they didn't stay when the car was stopped unless your foot was on the brake pedal (e.g. didn't stay on in a hill-hold situation). Bolt gen 2 brake lights stay on when the car is stopped (by one-pedal-driving or by hill-hold) and this is more intuitive to other drivers - although Bolt gen 2 brake lights are the ones that they moved down to the bumper, separate from the tail lights.

Keep in mind that with any old-school manual transmission vehicle, if you were stopped on level ground in neutral without your foot on the brake pedal (common), the brake lights aren't on in that situation, either. The Bolt gen 1 lack of brake lamps when stopped by hill-holder is analogous to that.

I'm mostly unconcerned with brake lights at a stop. I try to avoid situations where I am relying on brake lights to get those behind me to stop. I don't like stopping in a live lane to wait to turn left for instance and at a red light, hopefully the driver behind me sees the red light, if not I will trigger the brakes as they approach. Slowing on the other hand is where brake lights are really handy at letting others know to pay attention. There is a similar argument for engine braking on a bike but not that long ago it wasn't easy to solve. With IMU's they can probably do it easily now.

I changed the coding in my car to put the brake lights into strobing panic mode if abs comes on. If I am having a crap time stopping there is a good chance the person following me will too.

I don't think it ever made it to a production car but various concept cars over time have had chmsl vary in width with braking effort to give people a visual indication on how quickly you are slowing. Interesting but probably too variable and complicated for most people to understand. A simple brake lights on when decelerating at more than 0.1g (or some threshold that makes sense) seems like an easy solution that could be applied to all vehicles.