Comment by xnx

Comment by xnx 5 days ago

14 replies

> Electronic vehicles have made riding in Uber's an almost uniformly nauseating experience

I've heard this a lot. Are drivers heavily accelerating and decelerating?

culopatin 3 days ago

Most drivers are not conscious about rolling the gas or keeping it stable and drive by pulsing it on and off to maintain speed because they don’t have the attention, finesse, or both to drive smoothly. Also rolling on the inputs is not something most do. I used to train drivers for racing and not stabbing the gas or brakes is a learned skill that takes some time. Where a person will likely accelerate for too long having to then brake harder, a Waymo smoothes out the curve, preserving energy, which also means less jerk.

Not to mention that in SF you have the hills that add to the math.

jerlam 5 days ago

Teslas do this by default. They have very strong acceleration, since they were marketed as "sports cars" to people who don't know sports cars, and strong regeneration for efficiency and one-pedal driving.

  • CSMastermind 3 days ago

    I drive a sports car as my daily driver and I don't know what Tesla is trying to imitate but it's definitely not a sports car.

cosmic_cheese 5 days ago

Depends on the driver, but over the years I’ve gotten a decent number who floor it out of every stop sign/light and don’t adequately modulate speed to match the flow of traffic. With how quickly EVs accelerate I could see that making for a less than pleasant ride.

jpdstan 5 days ago

The worst is Revel, which, in NYC, are ALL teslas/EVs. worst taxi experience of my life was a 1 hr drive to airport in stop and go street light traffic. I appreciated the hustle but deleted the app soon after my gag reflex subsided. they should at least disable regenerative braking or something

  • recursive 3 days ago

    Regen braking is a way of slowing down like drum brakes. It's not inherently any less smooth.

    • sgerenser 3 days ago

      By context, he obviously means automatically applied regen breaking upon releasing the accelerator (so-called 1-pedal driving). While its possible to maintain a smooth speed with this feature, some drivers are using it improperly when e.g. approaching slowing traffic by just releasing the pedal and allowing the car to basically brake aggressively rather than feathering it to allow the car to coast smoothly to a stop.

    • Dylan16807 3 days ago

      It's likely they mean disabling one pedal driving, so regenerative braking will no longer trigger from letting off the accelerator.

    • Spooky23 3 days ago

      Uber guys take a bath on EVs, they try to squeeze more range.

      • recursive 3 days ago

        That does not really make sense. The most efficient way to drive for range is slow and smooth.

        • Spooky23 3 days ago

          Well, uber drivers spend like $0.60/mile, and make well under a dollar/mile, so the whole business doesn’t make much sense.

femiagbabiaka 5 days ago

Yes, although the deceleration seems to be partly due to regenerative braking. They're driving them like normal ICE cars.

mystifyingpoi 3 days ago

In my limited experience, all taxi drivers just do it all the time for time efficiency. They are paid by km most of the time, makes sense.