In the finale of "brake failure", how deep is the misunderstanding of consumers about Tesla's single pedal?

Travel Bureau

2024-05-31 14:37Published in Chongqing

In 2021, Tao Lin, Tesla's global vice president, said in an interview with the media, "For some functions (mainly referring to one-pedal), it is necessary to strengthen consumer education, such as cooperating with driving schools...", the remarks quickly caused an uproar, and many viewers accused Tesla of arrogance and persistence in the one-pedal mode, and even blamed consumers for not using Tesla's one-pedal badly and needing to be "educated".

Over the years, everyone has also paid special attention to Tesla's security incidents:

In March 2021, Ms. Li in Xi'an was involved in a traffic accident driving a Tesla;

In November 2023, a Tesla owner in Chengdu collided with 11 cars in a row;

On April 27, 2024, a husband and wife in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, drove a Tesla and rushed off a cliff...

These accidents are only part of the story, no matter what the real causes of Tesla's various safety accidents are, but the public has largely equated Tesla, failure, and one-pedal with the three key words, but this time the one-pedal mode seems to be really withdrawing from the stage of history.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that it organized the National Automotive Standardization Technical Committee to carry out the formulation and revision of five mandatory national standards such as "Technical Requirements and Test Methods for Passenger Car Brake System", and formed a draft for public comment. In this document, it is clearly mentioned that the driver's long-term braking stop by controlling the accelerator pedal (one-pedal mode) may lead to the development of corresponding driving habits and misuse in emergency braking conditions.

In layman's terms, if there is no accident, the single-pedal mode will be banned in China after July 27 this year, and the "brake failure" has finally ushered in the finale.

If I had to talk about the problem of one-pedal mode, probably the only thing was that it was a little anti-human in terms of habit formation. In an emergency, human instinct often prompts them to grab or make some remedial actions, but the driver's foot who is accustomed to a single pedal is likely not to be on the brake, and letting go of the foot and doing nothing is obviously against human instinct, so it may cause the driver to step on the accelerator vigorously, but these are not supported by quantifiable data, and it is difficult for us to say that there is a clear causal relationship between the single pedal and the accident.

Other than that, there is nothing wrong with the single pedal. Many people asked, and it seemed to be different from the online reviews they usually saw, which involved some misunderstandings or stereotypes about Tesla's one-pedal mode by the public.

First of all, there are many people who believe that a single pedal equals strong kinetic energy recovery, which is a common technology in all trams, and even some of our media colleagues agree with this statement. In fact, the single pedal does contain strong kinetic energy recovery, but it also has a stop mode in the case of idling, that is, when the throttle is lowered to a certain extent, the vehicle will cancel the idle speed and slow down until it stops, which is the biggest difference with the strong kinetic energy recovery of ordinary trams is that in some downhill sections, you can still rely on Tesla's single pedal to brake, but ordinary trams will definitely keep idling and continue to move forward.

It is very clear that the single pedal is definitely quite difficult to adjust, when to slow down, what amplitude to stop, when to maintain idling, and what strength to decelerate on the uphill and downhill sections, only when these problems are dealt with, the single pedal can be used more silky, Tesla is obviously one of the leaders, so the single pedal is definitely not a simple and difficult technology, and the test for engineers is very great.

Secondly, the first to make a single pedal was not actually Tesla, but BMW, but Tesla tuned better and sold higher, and completely carried it forward.

Of course, there is one of the most outrageous rumors about the one-pedal mode - Tesla models have no brakes. Friends who have seen Tesla cars should know that Tesla has a throttle and brakes, but in most cases you can complete driving by relying only on the throttle, which is why it is named "single pedal"

In short, because it is often linked to safety accidents by various media, the reputation of the single pedal in China has been demonized, and perhaps a complete ban is not necessarily a bad thing for Tesla, after all, no one will take the name of the single pedal to cover up the wrong operation of some car owners in an emergency to evade responsibility.

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