On the subject of automobiles making strange assumptions, my Chevy Bolt EV has a "feature" that I have never been able to understand:
The car has 2 drive modes: "D" and "L". The "D" mode mimics an automatic ICE car--it creeps forward when one lets off the brake, and coasts for a long time when one lets off the accelerator. I always drive the car in "L" mode, which is the aggressive regenerative braking mode. When I let off the gas it slows to a stop quickly (assuming the battery is not near full charge). And it does not creep when I release the brake.
But there is one bizarre exception: If I power on the car and put it in "L" mode, but I haven't yet fastened my seat belt, the car will creep forward when I let off the brake, just like in D. This has caught me off guard a few times, but I've always caught it and hit the brakes before the car rolled into my garage door or a car parked in front of me.
I once brought it up on /r/BoltEV, and someone claiming to be a Chevrolet engineer told me this behavior was by design, but had no good justification for it.
The reason is for safety (so people don't get out of their car while it's halted in L without the parking brake), this did cause me to (slowly) crash once, I am sure people have been nearly injured by the safety feature.
I later replaced my Bolt with a Tesla Model 3 (yeah, I have a lot of complaints here too, but overall it's less annoying) purely for fast-charging reasons, but driving a Bolt again afterwards drove me absolutely insane with their L mode:
- have to enable it each drive
- doesn't work in reverse
- creeps when seatbelt comes unbuckled and sometimes RANDOMLY
- randomly decides it's not going to regen as much even when low on charge
I know it's not the top of anybody else's demands from a car, but what the fuck Chevrolet. There should always be a button for "I didn't buy an EV by accident, now let me fucking drive it normally".
The truth is Chevrolet never intended to allow you to use L mode to drive at all. They only added it in, so you can put on the parking brake, and tap down the gear selector repeatedly to switch between L and D, making your car bounce up and down. I don't know of any other car with an electric twerking lever, and for that reason, it still holds a special place in my heart.
The real explanation is that every “L” or “B” mode on a hybrid or EV exactly duplicates the behavior of the original hybrid, the 2001 Toyota Prius. That vehicle made sure to get as close as it could to the behavior of automatic transmissions of Toyotas built in that time period.
The car has 2 drive modes: "D" and "L". The "D" mode mimics an automatic ICE car--it creeps forward when one lets off the brake, and coasts for a long time when one lets off the accelerator. I always drive the car in "L" mode, which is the aggressive regenerative braking mode. When I let off the gas it slows to a stop quickly (assuming the battery is not near full charge). And it does not creep when I release the brake.
But there is one bizarre exception: If I power on the car and put it in "L" mode, but I haven't yet fastened my seat belt, the car will creep forward when I let off the brake, just like in D. This has caught me off guard a few times, but I've always caught it and hit the brakes before the car rolled into my garage door or a car parked in front of me.
I once brought it up on /r/BoltEV, and someone claiming to be a Chevrolet engineer told me this behavior was by design, but had no good justification for it.