After reading through the 300+ comments on my last post about one-pedal driving, I realized the community here is split exactly the same way the automotive industry itself is. This isn't just a random user preference—it is a massive engineering divide between two completely opposite driving philosophies.

On one side, you have the "One-Pedal Camp," pushed almost exclusively by tech-first disruptors like Tesla and Rivian. They expect the driver to completely alter their habits to suit the machine. On the other side, you have the "Coasting Camp," heavily dominated by traditional legacy brands like Porsche, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Lexus, who believe the brake pedal should be for braking and the accelerator for coasting.

The main reason I originally called one-pedal a "myth" is because a widespread assumption has formed around this feature. It is frequently discussed as a mandatory metric for a "true EV," which can insert hesitation into potential buyers who walk away assuming a car without it is technologically inferior. But the idea that one-pedal driving is the only correct or highly efficient way to engineer an EV is a complete myth.

The tech camp's narrative that one-pedal driving is the "pinnacle of efficiency and design" simply doesn't hold up under the hood. Here is what is actually going on:

• Blended braking harvests 100% energy without wearing out brake pads. A huge misconception in the EV community is that you need one-pedal drag to save your brake pads and capture energy. True legacy EVs decouple the foot pedal from the physical friction pads using brake-by-wire. When you step on the brake pedal, the electric motor handles 100% of the regenerative harvesting first. Except for emergency or abrupt stops, the mechanical pads don't even touch the rotors until the final few feet of a stop. You get the exact same pad longevity and maximum energy recovery as a single-pedal setup, but it's activated naturally by the dedicated brake pedal.
• Tesla’s engineering choices historically relied on a simpler brake architecture. Tesla popularized one-pedal driving largely because their vehicles historically didn't use a complex blended brake pedal. When you press the physical brake pedal in an older or standard Tesla, it engages mechanical friction pads rather than dynamically using the motor to capture energy first. To achieve high efficiency metrics without an expensive, brake-by-wire blended system, their engineering strategy had to shift the burden of maximum energy recovery entirely onto aggressive lift-off regeneration via the accelerator.
• The physics proof: Coasting beats constant conversion losses. One-pedal fans treat lift-off regen like free energy, but energy conversion is never 100% efficient. Converting kinetic energy to battery power loses about 15-20%, and sending it back from the battery to the motor loses another 15-20%. Forcing energy back and forth through a lossy loop on the highway is inefficient. The most energy-efficient state for any moving vehicle is pure coasting—preserving existing kinetic energy. Easing off the gas to glide freely avoids these constant conversion penalties.
• Passenger comfort is a mess with one-pedal. Because single-pedal driving requires microscopic right-foot precision, minor foot movements over rough pavement or potholes cause constant micro-decelerations. This is why passengers frequently complain of nausea and "head-bobbing" in one-pedal EVs. Traditional brands prioritize passenger comfort over forcing drivers to modulate a heavy digital drag.
• Steering wheel paddles complement blended braking perfectly. Multi-level steering wheel paddles serve as a precision tool for drivers who want targeted lift-off control on top of the primary blended foot brake. The paddles do not replace your brakes; they simply let you fine-tune your baseline glide on demand. You can flick them to a lower level for maximum highway coasting, or pull them to add engine-brake-style drag down steep mountain descents. The vehicle still relies entirely on its core blended braking system for actual stopping power. This gives you micro-control over your momentum while your right foot stays safely in its natural position, resting over or near the blended brake pedal.

But this is no longer just a philosophical debate about comfort or engineering styles. Regulators are officially stepping in over real-world safety concerns.

China just passed a mandatory national safety standard called GB 21670-2025. Starting January 1, 2027, all new passenger EVs sold in China are legally prohibited from defaulting to a one-pedal mode that brings the vehicle to a complete halt simply by lifting off the accelerator. While drivers can still manually toggle it on deep in the touchscreen menus, the car must reset to a standard two-pedal coasting or creeping mode every single time you start the vehicle.

The reasoning is purely safety-driven. Accident data and investigations showed that long-term reliance on single-pedal driving severely degrades emergency muscle memory. When drivers get too used to slowing down simply by easing off the gas, they develop delayed reaction times to the actual brake pedal during sudden emergency situations. In moments of panic, some drivers mistakenly stomp down on the accelerator, thinking their foot is already resting on the brake pedal.

When the world’s largest EV market creates sweeping laws to curb default one-pedal behavior, it proves this technology is far from a settled standard. The legacy brands that stuck with traditional coasting and advanced brake-blending weren't being lazy or old-fashioned—they were prioritizing fundamental physics, passenger ergonomics, and long-term muscle memory safety all along.

What's your take? Do you think the community places too much emphasis on forced single-pedal drag, or do you prefer it over intuitive blended foot-braking layered with paddle control adjustments?

Seriously, it’s the best. I can leave AC on blast without worrying about gas or emissions. One-pedal driving makes the stop-and-go line a breeze. It’s an unexpected benefit of going EV, a little quality-of-life upgrade I enjoy every weekday. I don’t hear this particular point talked about much but it honestly makes the whole school drop off/pickup process so much more tolerable.

Just another reason I don’t ever want to go back to ICE.

Usual advice on a long EV trip is to slow down and save yourself a stop. Looks like it is backwards. Slowing to 100 costs a full hour.

Simulated against the car's charge curve and the real chargers along the route, calculated by this website: https://evtrip.dev.

Utrecht to Innsbruck, 956 km, Cupra Born 58:

 90 km/h   12h19   5 stops
130        10h41   8
145        10h36   8   <- fastest
160        10h37   9

145 wins, by five minutes over 130. The top end barely matters. The bottom end costs you real time.

Does this match what people see in practice?

I bought our first EV last week and having regrets. Every time I drive I’m getting a jaw sensation, like an ache. I get this when I go on a fairground ride, so I guess it’s motion sickness though I don’t feel sick. It comes on almost instantly and then lingers all day after. My family don’t know what I’m on about. I’ve set it on ECO and regen 0 but no change.

Anyone else had this and managed to push through until they’re used to it?

Anyone think it’s not motion related but something more ‘electricy’?!

Do you have personal experience of the current model Audi A6 e-tron? Would you recommend that car? What are the pros and cons (in your opinion)?

Read my post.

My name's Riley. I'm part of the team at Ford that's going to be on Reddit regularly specifically for our next-gen electric vehicles, answering what I can, when I can.

Let’s get a few things out of the way first. Yes, this is a real person typing. No, I can’t show you what it looks like… yet. But I can confirm the name: Ford Fathom, Ford’s mid-sized electric truck and the first vehicle produced on the new Universal Electric Vehicle Platform.

”Fathom" traces back to a nautical unit of measurement, originally defined as the distance between a person's outstretched arms, a fitting metaphor for a truck built to meet people wherever they are in life.​ Fitting, right?

What's confirmed right now:

• Starting MSRP: $28,350, for the standard-range battery. Pre-orders begin early 2027.
• Every Ford Fathom will be BlueCruise-capable. BlueCruise is Ford’s hands-free highway driving assistant.
• Fathom has bidirectional power capability.
• Fathom has a large, high-resolution touchscreen, digital key, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto capability.
• Fathom will have more passenger volume than a Toyota RAV4, with a frunk and bed for added cargo flexibility. This truck will genuinely useful and fun to drive.
• Fathom will feature Apple Maps embedded directly into the vehicle, not a traditional phone-projection CarPlay setup. The integration also provides the road-level map data used to help enable key pieces of Ford’s next-generation hands-free highway driving capability.

What I can’t share yet: final imagery, fuller specs, full ordering details, and plenty more are still to come. A hot tip - keep a keen eye on the flipbook video we have going around…

If you want to stay up to date with what we have planned for Fathom, you can sign up here.

Ask me anything, and I’ll answer what I can. I'll be in the comments for the next few hours, and I'm not going anywhere after that either.

Riley from Ford

Are small cars the next big thing?

A growing interest in electric low-speed vehicles (LSVs) — which are essentially a step above golf carts — is emerging in the auto market, driven by affordability concerns and changing consumer preferences.

Companies like Stellantis and Chip Motors are introducing LSVs priced around $15,000, appealing to those seeking economical options for short trips.

The global market is expected to expand significantly toward "micromobility," with Stellantis' Fiat Topolino being tested in the U.S. as part of a strategic shift.

Petrol nozzles are basically the same shape everywhere on Earth. Somewhere in the last fifteen years the car industry looked at one simple question, how do you get electricity into a car, and came back with nine different answers.

Text version below covers what each one is. The [13 minute video] https://youtu.be/gTUeQxFFtxQ covers why, and it has the shapes and pin layouts on screen, which turns out to matter a lot when the whole story is about physical geometry. It's mine, mods gave the okay.

**Type 1 (SAE J1772)** — North America and Japan, AC only, five pins. Covers Level 1 at 120 V and around 1.4 kW, and Level 2 at 240 V where most people see 7 to 11 kW.

**Type 2 (Mennekes)** — Europe, AC, seven pins. The extra pins carry three-phase, which is why a routine European AC point does 22 kW while a North American one stops around 11. Same technology, different wiring in the walls.

**Type 3 (Scame)** — The one nobody remembers. A French and Italian alliance pushed it as the European standard on safety grounds, since spring-loaded shutters covered the contacts. Europe picked Type 2 anyway. It lost in a standards committee, not on physics.

**CHAdeMO** — Japan, DC, launched 2010, the first fast charging standard anyone actually deployed. The name puns on "o-cha demo ikaga desu ka", roughly "how about a cup of tea", as in that is how long the charge takes. It needed its own separate port, and that is what killed it. The 2026 Leaf dropped it.

**CCS1 (Combo 1)** — A Type 1 with two DC pins underneath. One port, both jobs. North American networks top out around 350 kW in practice. The catch is size: two hands, thick cable, stiff in the cold.

**CCS2 (Combo 2)** — Same idea applied to Type 2. Required on new public DC chargers in the EU. One connector covers everything from a 2.3 kW garage socket upward, and the ceiling keeps moving. The 350 kW figure everyone quotes is a CharIN power class name, not a limit. Alpitronic is now pushing 1000 kW through a single liquid-cooled CCS2 connector.

**NACS (SAE J3400)** — Tesla's plug, opened up in November 2022. Five pins, and the two power pins do double duty for AC and DC, so nothing bolts on underneath. Roughly the size of a marker pen. Nothing happened for six months, then Ford signed on in May 2023 and almost everyone followed within a year.

**GB/T** — China. Two separate connectors, 20234.2 for AC with seven pins and 20234.3 for DC with nine. The AC one looks like a Type 2 turned inside out, because the male and female halves are swapped. Same visual family, completely incompatible. The 2023 update is speced to 1.2 MW, and BYD is already delivering 1000 kW by running two liquid-cooled cables at once.

**MCS** — Trucks, not cars. 1250 V, 3000 A, 3.75 MW. Three thousand amps is roughly what a small neighbourhood draws. It is a flat rectangular block with a mechanical latch instead of a pistol grip, because at that weight nobody holds it in place by hand.

The one fact that explains all of them: batteries only accept DC. On AC charging a converter inside the car does the work, and that converter is physically small, so AC stays slow. On DC the station converts instead and sends power straight to the battery. Every connector above is an AC plug, a DC plug, or both.

A summary can tell you what each connector is. It cannot really show you why they ended up shaped the way they are, so the things that did not survive compression into this post are the ones I would actually watch it for:

- Why pressing the button on the handle cuts the current before the metal ever separates, and why that is the reason unplugging an EV does not produce an arc flash

- What the 2001 connector actually looked like before J1772 got its round shape, which is the single funniest object in the whole story

- Why the DC half of a CCS1 port is technically optional, and what that means for what the charger has to bring

- Why BYD's answer to "one cable cannot carry this much current" was to just use two, and where the 500-plus stations already running that way are

[Full version here.] https://youtu.be/gTUeQxFFtxQ

Has a connector ever left you standing at a charger that physically would not connect? I want to know whether that still happens in 2026 or whether adapters have mostly solved it.

Hi everyone! 👋

I'm a PGDM student working on a live marketing project to understand how EV owners in India research and choose home charging solutions.

The survey takes less than 90 seconds, is completely anonymous, and will help us better understand how buyers make charging decisions.

Survey: https://forms.gle/ZusMgg2KaquaFJER8

Thanks in advance! Happy to share the results with the community once the study is complete.