BMW i3S : EV life day 145 - regenerative brake light activation

What level of brake regenerative charging triggers the rear brake lights? Does it differ on each of the drive modes on BMW's i3S?

0:00 intro
1:23 ECO PRO+
3:00 ECO PRO
3:35 COMFORT
4:53 SPORT

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[stephenknight-my]

A very useful video thanks. I have an i3S and always wondered when the brake lights came on when I was decelerating.

[pqvid]

Hahaha, beautiful! 👍 You would not believe how many people told me they don't like the "shakey" drive of an EV, and I had to teach them that there are more than just two positions for the gas pedal 🤣
I see a real engineer doing his research! If you could measure the g deceleration, you would probably come up to some EU regulated value that requires to turn on the stop signals at some XXX*g deceleration ☺️

[PeterScott]

Whilst it is correct that regeneration doesn't recover 100% of your kinetic energy, using the brake pedal recovers 0%. So to get maximum range you should control your speed anticipating stops such that you don't need to use the brake pedal. Using the regenerative braking is very useful especially if you are descending a hill or slowing for any reason.

[decimal]

Hope you're going to lease more EVs to test - these videos are great.

[pqvid]

BTW, Tesla had an issue with regenerative braking and ABS. It caught me off guard first, but fortunately I was alone on a road in the woods, and I figured out quickly what could be the issue. If you brake too hard to get your wheels locked, the ABS engages and removes/reapplies the brakes. Well, what if your wheels block from regen braking alone? The ABS now has to control more than just the brakes. It needs to be able to reduce the regen power. That's a very tricky thing! Even Tesla just removes (now that they fixed it) regen completely if it discovers that the wheels get blocked. The BMW has even completely separated control units — the ABS controller (most probably from Bosch) doesn't have any data from the motor, there's probably not even a connection between the ABS controller and the motor controller.
That's the reason I like Tesla — or better phrased, Tesla's technology — because nowadays you would have one controller for everything, having the complete view of all the systems in the car. No reason to have separate, isolated units doing their own work in their own world...
Nice short video! 👍

[markjones]

Hi Mark great video, thank you. Do you know if you can adjust the regen? Cheers from another Mark

[FakeConcern]

I think Traction Control comes on more than the brake lights!