Regenerative brake

[F1Ruaraidh]

I am quite happy with the way the Porsche is designed and implemented.

But I can also see that it will be desirable to have the options to engage no recuperation, little , medium and strong, as well as adaptive like the auto setting.

I live at 550 m above sea level and often go down to the coast. Driving down for about 15 km, I can have a higher SoC down there as when I started! Consumption can be indicated as negative in the town at the coast. With the Taycan I can either dab the brakes most of the time to slowdown to speed limit 50 km/h or engage the ACC speed settings. It will the recuperate energy nicely.

Our BMW i4 has brake recuperation blended as the Taycan, but it also has a few extra settings.
’I can engage strong brake recup and it is then a OPD car called B (brake?) setting.
Or I can engage D drive mode and then choose level of recuperation. None =coasting, light = lift off, medium slightly stronger and then strong = OPD. Or I can set it to adaptive. At that setting it will coast, but if there is slower traffic ahead it will slow down as with ACC. And it works really well, if you want it.

It is quite useful to easily switch between town driving in start stop and long motorway stints.

I guess my brake lights turn on and off more frequently with the strong recuperation setting, but it feels great.

And the car is only rear wheel drive so not as powerful recuperation as if it had been as a 4WD.

To me this is a great implementation by BMW and you can then set the preference as you like.

But of course this would be Softare, which is not a Porsche speciality.

In the cooler part of the year the recuperation going down to sea level helps heating up the battery ata low penalty in consumption. Of course climbing back up takes a lot of energy, but my average has been surprisingly good

Exactly. It's the ability to have selectable options for regen that's missing.

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[Scandinavian]

Of course one pedal driving with lift off regeneration and friction brakes is the cheapest and both mechanically and electrically the easiest to implement, so was the early solution naturally enough.

But it is quite amazing that Tesla managed to get the marketing message through around a lousy design!

 

[f1eng]

But it is quite amazing that Tesla managed to get the marketing message through around a lousy design!

Clever marketing is all about convincing customers that the thing that is the easiest and cheapest to make is the most desirable.

I don't think the Tesla solution is lousy, it made total sense from a cost and engineering workload POV initially and a lot of people do like it and some see it as a hallmark of EVs.

The first EV I tried was a Jaguar iPace and the salesman spent a lot of time explaining how lucky I was to be able to have 1-pedal driving and how brilliant it was.
I did not warm to it.
It just reminded me of the hydrostatic drive on my lawnmower which is also 1-pedal because that is easiest with a hydrostatic drive too.

 

[tigerbalm]

Solid 1-pedal driving.

 

[Jhenson29]

I still maintain you can drive the Taycan with just one pedal if you’re willing to receive braking assistance from the car in front of you. Now if you have a line of Taycans on the road….i don’t know…but fortunately they are rare here and I almost always have an F150 in front of me to assist.

 

[whitex]

Exactly. It's the ability to have selectable options for regen that's missing.

If you can show Porsche how many more Taycans they will sell in return for spending the money on making it all selectable, if you can reasonably prove it the ROI is high enough, they'll probably do it. The cost of implementing and maintaining different ways is not negligible, quite high actually as you have to keep testing all driving modes for each update, no matter how minor. Notice that Tesla tries to be flexible when it comes to offering selectable options to customers, yet they only offer one today - OPD. That tells you they realized offering more is not going to help their sales enough to offset the costs, or they would have done it already.

 

[SHM]

If you can show Porsche how many more Taycans they will sell in return for spending the money on making it all selectable, if you can reasonably prove it the ROI is high enough, they'll probably do it. The cost of implementing and maintaining different ways is not negligible, quite high actually as you have to keep testing all driving modes for each update, no matter how minor. Notice that Tesla tries to be flexible when it comes to offering selectable options to customers, yet they only offer one today - OPD. That tells you they realized offering more is not going to help their sales enough to offset the costs, or they would have done it already.

Lets tell them we dont want our batteries to catch fire then, maybe they will implement the change

 

[F1Ruaraidh]

If you can show Porsche how many more Taycans they will sell in return for spending the money on making it all selectable, if you can reasonably prove it the ROI is high enough, they'll probably do it. The cost of implementing and maintaining different ways is not negligible, quite high actually as you have to keep testing all driving modes for each update, no matter how minor. Notice that Tesla tries to be flexible when it comes to offering selectable options to customers, yet they only offer one today - OPD. That tells you they realized offering more is not going to help their sales enough to offset the costs, or they would have done it already.

Regen *is* selectable in a Tesla. Strong or weak. I just went out and checked.

I believe newer (cheaper) 3/Y do not have this option but the more expensive S/X definitely do.

Expensive cars = more options.

 

[F1Ruaraidh]

Clever marketing is all about convincing customers that the thing that is the easiest and cheapest to make is the most desirable.

I don't think the Tesla solution is lousy, it made total sense from a cost and engineering workload POV initially and a lot of people do like it and some see it as a hallmark of EVs.

The first EV I tried was a Jaguar iPace and the salesman spent a lot of time explaining how lucky I was to be able to have 1-pedal driving and how brilliant it was.
I did not warm to it.
It just reminded me of the hydrostatic drive on my lawnmower which is also 1-pedal because that is easiest with a hydrostatic drive too.

Bosch BBW didn't exist when S launched. It was only launched for customer (OEM) pre-engineering in 2016.

I've had OPD for 6 years and I prefer it. Of course when driving hard, the Porsche system is great. For gentler driving the option to select an OPD mode on the expensive knob on the wheel or the individual setting would be best of all worlds. Ho hum.

 

[whitex]

Regen *is* selectable in a Tesla. Strong or weak. I just went out and checked.

I believe newer (cheaper) 3/Y do not have this option but the more expensive S/X definitely do.

Expensive cars = more options.

I meant Tesla only offers OPD, not selectable between one pedal or blended braking. When you select weak regen, pressing the brake does not apply any regen. I only ever drove one car that offered both, OPD and blended braking - it was the EQS. They OPD was slightly different than Tesla though, the brake pedal actually went down when letting off the accelerator, so I guess you could call it a software based OPD. Porsche could offer the same via just software, but perhaps they learned from Mercedes that most customers don't use it?

As for which cars had weak vs. strong regen, they all had it, then it disappeared in the US at one point because the EPA would not allow Tesla to publish range achieved in strong regen if it was available to change to weak as an option to the end user. Even after they took it out of the UI, you could still set it via a third party app, like the SEXY buttons. I don't know the current situation, whether they brought it back in US or still hiding it. Personally, especially on my first (of 4) Model S'es, which was rear-wheel-drive, the weak regen was vital for driving in icy conditions - with strong regen, letting off the accelerator during turns would cause the car to oversteer because the rear wheel would brake, breaking traction.

 

[F1Ruaraidh]

I meant Tesla only offers OPD, not selectable between one pedal or blended braking. When you select weak regen, pressing the brake does not apply any regen. I only ever drove one car that offered both, OPD and blended braking - it was the EQS. They OPD was slightly different than Tesla though, the brake pedal actually went down when letting off the accelerator, so I guess you could call it a software based OPD. Porsche could offer the same via just software, but perhaps they learned from Mercedes that most customers don't use it?

As for which cars had weak vs. strong regen, they all had it, then it disappeared in the US at one point because the EPA would not allow Tesla to publish range achieved in strong regen if it was available to change to weak as an option to the end user. Even after they took it out of the UI, you could still set it via a third party app, like the SEXY buttons. I don't know the current situation, whether they brought it back in US or still hiding it. Personally, especially on my first (of 4) Model S'es, which was rear-wheel-drive, the weak regen was vital for driving in icy conditions - with strong regen, letting off the accelerator during turns would cause the car to oversteer because the rear wheel would brake, breaking traction.

Ah gotcha. Yes you're quite right and Tesla still get RWD regen all round their necks as it bypasses the ESP. Pretty poor overall system design. Over here (UK), selectable regen levels still an option on older S at least.

No blended braking available. That said, even with heavier braking requiring friction rather than high power regen like the Taycan, my old S still has the original brakes at 130k miles. Oroginal pads and original discs and the same driving style and routes as all my old AMGs which would have had multiple disc and pad replacements by that mileage. Quite epic.

 

[f1eng]

I've had OPD for 6 years and I prefer it. Of course when driving hard, the Porsche system is great. For gentler driving the option to select an OPD mode on the expensive knob on the wheel or the individual setting would be best of all worlds. Ho hum.

I have had OPD on my lawnmower for more than 6 years it works OK, on a lawnmower...

Your preference is not the same as mine, which I am fine with.

There was nothing about OPD I preferred or even particularly liked but were it to be an option it would be no skin off my nose.
Perhaps we could have "range" "normal" "sport" "sport +" and "lawnmower" modes.

 

[f1eng]

Bosch BBW didn't exist when S launched. It was only launched for customer (OEM) pre-engineering in 2016.

Is that a standard industry wide availability solution?

The guy I know best at Porsche (admittedly on the racing side) told me the Taycan system was developed from the 919 regen system. I don't know if Bosch co-developed that.
We did do a co-development of ABS with Bosch on F1 with Michael Schumacher in 1993 before it was (thankfully) banned.
Michael found it very difficult to get used to, it seemed he judged grip level by braking and with ABS had no idea how close he was to the limit and spun a lot on turn in, which he almost never did without ABS.

 

[F1Ruaraidh]

Yep. Widely used. Racing v different as doesn't have to satisfy road homologation so no FuSa legislative requirements eg ISO26262. But the supplier I think Porsche are using does do both.

Michael was difficult on a number of topics including throwing up in first gen sims as his brain was so sensitive to tiny timing errors in the visual/physical cueing.

 

[Jhenson29]

Perhaps we could have "range" "normal" "sport" "sport +" and "lawnmower" modes.

That’s how I’m referring to OPD from now on…

“OPD? You mean lawnmower mode?”

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