I can see Bolts 1 pedal driving the new road rage trigger

That's actually my plan: wanna be 50' closer to your destination, be my guest.

 

No, they didn't.
Yes, the brake lights are activated when the car is deaccelerating by a certain amount.
The rapid on-off of the brakes you saw was due to the driver speeding up and slowing down rapidly.

If someone in any car speeds up and slows down rapidly the brake lights will activate and deactivate.
Your issue is not with regenerative 'one pedal' driving, it is with people speeding up and slowing down rapidly.

 

I haven't seen too many manual transmission cars with the brake lights coming on during rapid down shifting.

 

that's how everyone drives around here.

 

The i3 brake lights come on during regen.

 

Strong regenerative braking, as well as brake pedal usage, is what will trigger brake lights in most cars capable of it.

Teslas will do it too.

 

VW BEVs also have the brake lights come on with heavy regen. If a deceleration rate of x or higher requires brake light activation isn't in a vehicle code some where, and the manufacturers have come to the conclusion it is needed for safety and liability.

So the driver of the Bolt you saw either...

• was unfamiliar with one pedal driving. The feel of steering, braking, and acceleration varies between ICE cars. One pedal driving is a further divergence from that norm. So people new too it will need time to adjust. Keep the gas pedal pressed half way to coast is a new concept for the majority of drivers out there.
• or is just drives aggressively no matter what car they are in. You might even have crossed paths with him before, but just brushed it off as some jerk driver because his car model was one you've seen hundreds of times.

 

Most likely that is because you haven't experienced someone in a Tesla driving that erratically.
My understanding is that the brake lights light, when the car slows down at, or above a certain rate. As I recall it is 0.2G, but it may be slightly more or less.

All EVs that slow down at, or above that rate, will light the brake lights.
If the Bolt driver had slowed down as quickly by using friction brakes, you would have seen the same thing.
If a Gen 2 Prius had sped up and slowed down as quickly (requiring friction brakes) you would see the same thing.

Brake lights are SUPPOSED to light when the car slows down. Don't blame the brake lights for lighting as designed, blame the driver for changing speed so much.

 

I watch these guys gas/brake/gas/brake, a half a block down the road, day after day. They stand on the brake, I coast up to them. They floor it, I start gradually speeding up. I stick to the right lane, and the speed limits. No problems.

 

I'm not sure if you're saying this because you feel it's a bad thing, but this is the mentality of most drivers. Like getting somewhere is some sort of race we need to 'win'. I don't, and will never, understand this thought process. The reason traffic slows down is bottleneck. Everyone refusing to allow space to let traffic merge = bottleneck. People always in such a big damn hurry, and for what? Shave 30 seconds off your trip? UGH.

 

Thank you!

I wish more people felt this way. It would make slower traffic at least move along at a pace vs. bottlenecked and stopped.

 

For some reason, when I read the word "perfectly" I can hear Hal9000's voice.........................................

 

<sigh>
Ok, let me try this again, as I think we are just talking past each other.
The basic purpose for brake lights are not to warn you someone is pressing a pedal in the car. They are there to warn people a car is slowing down.
I don't care if someone is touching a pedal in their car, I care if a car is slowing down.
Now, with ICE cars, this warning has, lazily, been placed on the brake pedal. This works well for most ICE cars as the only time they are slowing moderately quickly is when the driver presses the brake pedal.

Hybrids introduced regenerative braking. This regenerative braking was not seen as significant enough to require automatic brake lights, thus they didn't get introduced.
Now, with some cars having larger batteries which can take more energy, the rate of slowing has increased, thus the brake lights triggered by an accelerometer was born.
Now, I am not SURE that everyone does it this way, but I know Tesla and BMW do, and I strongly suspect everyone else does as well.

If a car is slowing down rapidly and speeding up repeatedly, I think it would be a safety issue if the brake lights didn't light.

With this said, please note, nowhere did I say that the Bolt's solution is well done, or doesn't need tweaking.

What I am saying, is that it is not regenerative braking per se that is the issue, but the way the driver was operating the vehicle.

 

Brake lights are a safety signal to let cars behind you that you are slowing down and may even stop. Their activation is tied to the brake pedal simply because that was the easiest way to do it, and it the friction brakes was how most people slowed their car quickly, but I've witnessed a near crash when someone severely downshifted and/or pulled the emergency brake without touching the brake pedal because they got pissed at a tailgater.

Moving brake light activation to a deceleration rate is a good thing for driving safety.

I think you'd be surprised at the foot dancing experienced manual drivers are capable of. Then there are people like my father that brake with their left foot. Some of those have enough resting pressure on the brake pedal to activate the lights all the time.

Without being in the car, you can't say if this Bolt driver had the car in D, and was using the brake pedal.

I think you, and perhaps this Bolt driver, are not fully comprehending how one pedal driving works.

There is a midpoint of the accelerator's travel in which energy flow is stopped, and the car is effectively in neutral. Depress the pedal, and energy flows to the motor for acceleration. Release the pedal, and energy flows from the motor/generator. To a battery, we call it regenerative braking. To a bank of resistors, it's named dynamic braking. The energy flow is not simply on or off like it is with the tiny bit of regen a hybrid accelerator pedal has. It is variable, and increases the further away from that neutral point the pedal moves.

In short, one pedal driving allows the same control over the amount of regen braking force from the accelerator as is possible through the brake pedal.

Toyota has had to tweak the feel and operation of their hybrids' brakes. Blending friction and regen on one pedal isn't easy, and why some BEVs have had regen brake control done completely through the accelerator, and left the brake pedal to control just the friction brakes. So it is possible that GM needs to make adjustments to their system on the Bolt, or this sole example of a Bolt driver needed more pratice with one pedal driving, or just driving in general.

 

what we need is traffic police who actually try to do something about erratic driving.

 

I will say, in the Model S I test drove, getting all 60 kW of regen on the accelerator took a fair amount of getting used to. The way they described it to me was that it was like driving a manual ICE car in 2nd, and I'd actually concur with that.

However, it does mean that they didn't need to worry about a blended brake pedal at all.