Psuedo one pedal driving
 

I've been frustrated with the lack of one petal driving on the eTron -- this is relative to my experience in a BMW i3, where I can mostly drive with one foot in stop and go traffic, and in urban environments with lots of stop signs. While driving the eTron, the time lost to move my foot between the gas and break is >0,1s than the time to take the foot off the brake on EV's with harder regen. I suspect this impacts efficiency as less regen braking, and more actual brakes are used. While I care about efficiency, I am not trying to eek out the highest efficiency numbers, as I drive fast and aggressively.

In trying to use the regen petals behind the steering wheel, it took some time to figure out how it works. I had incorrectly assumed that pulling "-" multiple times would increase regen for the driving session, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

When I pull on the "-" with my foot off the gas, regen is immediately applied; this happens for up two pulls. Hence when I let my foot off the brake, I pull "-" once or twice depending on the deceleration needed, and often don't need to touch the brake petal. In comparison to the BMW i3, using this approach I press the brake more on the eTron relative to the BMW i3.

Driving this way has made a difference in mi/kwh during this mornings stop-and-go commute by 0.2 to 0.4 miles (10% - 20%). I need to do a more formal experiment to confirm this empirical observation.

Anyone else have other observations, or suggestions?

I wonder if Audi's weak mpge is a result of this driver interface which accomodates non-EV drivers at the expense of efficiency.

I think thats how the regen 'paddles' are supposed to work.

Foot off accelerator, pull on paddles, no brake needed. It works very efficiently on my newer volt. Done properly you never touch the brake. The question always has been regen to stop with no creep. This option is not there in the Etron. I bet it could be done with a simple software update. All the hardware is there but the engineers are hesitant.

I am not a former EV driver and have no experience with one pedal driving so I may not be thinking of it exactly the way you've experience it in your other cars. That's my disclaimer so the one pedal purists will not be brutal. But I've been experimenting as I'm a tech geek and that's my nature, also I just love this driving experience so far.

I also found the paddles slightly confusing. But realized that if you look at the little space on the dial that has the little "charge" section at the end indicating regen and pull the minus paddle you will see a little white line appear in the charge section and move based on how many times you pull it. Pulling the plus paddle removes it and you'll see the white line disappear.

I seem to be able to get very close to not using the brake in traffic by two different methods. Note - I have only been driving in Efficiency Mode with Auto Regen set to ON and do not know if my observations would change in other modes yet. So far I have found that turning on the car's Driver Assistance mode gives me additional unsolicited braking as the car in front of you slows when you let off the gas slightly as it tries to help you maintain the distance between you and the car in front. Similar to the benefits of adaptive cruise in stop & go. I haven't been able to come to a full stop yet doing this but a pretty slow roll along following traffic has worked well. Secondly - I've also found that pulling the (-) regen paddle towards me and holding it will apply heavier, consistent regen braking....I can't find anywhere in the documentation that talks about this as a real thing but it's something my salesperson told me and we tried several times on the test drive. I also saw a test drive video of Thomas from Autogefuehl doing a long downhill drive where he used that paddle to effectively one pedal drive down through the curves, etc and he was surprised and commented that it was the first time he'd ever controlled a car solely by using the paddle. I can't honestly say for sure if this is a reality yet as I haven't had it long enough to try it in many different circumstances. I've not been successful at coming to a full and complete stop in either case without using the brakes at the very, very end. Just my unscientific observations and trials so far.

Still playing. ALL that said....I have not focused on what effect either of these habits have on range yet.

Someone had the suggestion (forgot the post, but want to credit the author) to set regneration to "MANUAL" in the Vehicle->Efficiency menu, which I tried this morning, as a proxy for one petal driving, like my BMW i3. This requires you to remember to hit the "-" paddle twice each time the car is started for the strongest regeneration when taking your foot off the gas, that applies for the remainder of your driving session.

I can report this mostly works, however a stronger level of regeneration is needed to better match how other one petal driving EV's perform.

That said, what I didn't expect was a material change in range. With this in place, my morning commute range went from 2.2mi/kw to 2.5mi/kw -- a 10% improvement. This is mostly highway, up to 80mi/h when traffic is clear, and including ~10 milles of urban.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.aud...2531248a95.jpg

I had been deliberately using the "-" petal to force regeneration when needed to decelerate, but it seems the petal is both more convenient and more efficient. Thus far on ~400 miles the car is averaging 2.0mi/kwh, but this should improve this in the positive direction, if the improvement holds for more driving sessions.

2.5mi/kw puts the car closer to the >200mi EPA rating on an Edition One with the larger 21" rims.

My auto regenerate mode seems to guess if it’s needed when I am coasting and auto apply, so I kinda like this. There are times when I want to coast and it seems to know that.

The auto regeneration is very friendly for those we prefer the vehicle to coast when letting off the gas. Several BMW i3 owners complained about the strong regeneration, and found it difficult to find the balance of coasting and regeneration with the gas petal. I can see how this is a auto-regeneration is good for many drivers.

I never had a problem with finding this balance, and grew to love it, which is why it's noticeably missing in the eTron for me.

I played with it a bit on my commute today, and I think that the auto regen can step at better increments, IE it can apply regen amount between 1/2 clicks of the paddle, where manual cannot. I think for more casual driving/longer trips auto would be the way to go, but for more engaging/fun commutes manual would be the way to go.

According to the Thomas from Autogefuehlderst downhill video he stated that any paddle settings get reset to the default when you step on the brakes if you are in automatic regen mode. In manual mode the paddle setting get reset everytime you turn off the car.

I would be so grateful to Audi if they could provide a setting to enable true one-pedal driving (This would not take anything away from the two pedal lovers). This setting would allow for a "third click" on the "-" paddle and retention of that setting from day to day. Third click meaning more deceleration. If doing so would help improve range, as the experiments described above suggest, then I can imagine getting quite a bit of support for such a request.

The thing with true "one pedal", is that it actually requires friction brakes at low speeds. I'd be willing to bet that the highest level of regen on the paddles is really all the car can do. Blending the brake pads in like the i3 does is something that requires more than a software update.

This is my take. I have engaged the regen paddle to max regen, and it moves 2 notches below the neutral line in the 'energy' gauge (left). If you are slowing with the regen, but need more slowing and you depress the brake pedel.....you can notice on the gauge that you get more regen....before the brake calipers apply to slow or stop. Too much brake pedal....and the brake calipers engage....feather the pedal and you can find the balance between more regen and actual brakes.