Hello!
I was looking forward to never cleaning my wheels again after my Tesla owning friend said that EVs hardly use the brakes and slow down with re gen.
I can’t say this is true of my E. The wheels are filthy with brake dust every time I wash the car!
I am addicted to one peddle driving and use this all the time. Is this the issue? If I stop using this feature does the car still slow down using re gen? Help!
Brake dust
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- Posts: 92
- Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2020 2:25 pm
No. You cannot determine how much braking is done by regen or by the brake pads. The car will always try to use regen as much as possible - check your energy flow display, you are regenerating when you press the brake pedal even with one pedal driving switched off.
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- Posts: 92
- Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2020 2:25 pm
To be precise, you can set the deceleration behaviour when you take the foot of the throttle control, you cannot set the "regen level". Check out the technical documentation available on Honda Maris.
for everyone’s information, just in case you were as silly as I was:
For the first month of owning my E, I thought it was using regen when it wasn’t activated at all and I was manually applying the regen by having to apply it every time you want to brake using the steering pedals. Not only is it tedious but the regen level even on the harshest level is weak.
I pressed the one pedal button and was pleasantly surprised as to how strong regen is in this car. I was used to my i3 which was perfect. The E is even stronger but sadly the Honda engineers forgot to switch it off in reverse, they also didn’t figure out how to maintain a smooth complete stop. I love Honda but ze Germans just have that edge.
For the first month of owning my E, I thought it was using regen when it wasn’t activated at all and I was manually applying the regen by having to apply it every time you want to brake using the steering pedals. Not only is it tedious but the regen level even on the harshest level is weak.
I pressed the one pedal button and was pleasantly surprised as to how strong regen is in this car. I was used to my i3 which was perfect. The E is even stronger but sadly the Honda engineers forgot to switch it off in reverse, they also didn’t figure out how to maintain a smooth complete stop. I love Honda but ze Germans just have that edge.
My understanding is that one peddle is actually just aggressively using the brakes and perhaps has very little to do with re gen? I believe this because the brake lights come on almost instantly when lifting off, and my wheels are covered in brake dust. My mates a Tesla puts out no brake dust at all and I think hardly uses the brakes...
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- Posts: 92
- Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2020 2:25 pm
It uses both, hydraulic and re-gen braking. Below 5 km/h, it only uses hydraulic braking.
The brakes lights come on when the car is decelerating above a certain level, regardless of whether the brakes are being used or it's just using regeneration to slow down. The regen. level isn't as high as it was in my Nissan LEAF, which could use up to 30kW of regen. The Tesla has a larger capacity battery and a more powerful motor(s) so it is probably able to use stronger regen. The Honda has a smaller capacity battery than the LEAF, but equally powerful motor, so I guess it's the battery capacity that's the limiting factor for maximum regen level.
Honda E is rear wheel drive and as everyone knows brake bias is usually more on the front wheels. This gives a less stronger regen to rear wheel drive cars. If you do not want to use hydraulic brakes you need to brake early and gently. Any hard braking is going to use the hydraulic brakes. Also, do not think that one pedal driving mode does not use hydraulic brakes. As SwissChris said at low speed it uses only the hydraulic brakes, with or without one pedal driving. I suspect also that with one pedal mode being so strong it could be always using a bit of hydraulic brakes. The best thing to judge is look at the green meter on the right hand side of the display when slowing down. If it decreases but you apply more braking force then you are probably using more hydraulic than regen. That meter is all we have at the moment to measure the regen until an OBDII app comes out to show us accurate real time data.