It's just that Tesla didn't spend skill points on brake blending tech unlockable. Some people confuse it as being a piece of technology of its own.

Every other EVs and HVs assign first half of brake pedal for regen and bottom half for mechanical brakes. Tesla uses bottom half of gas pedal for the same, which eliminates the need to accurately determine the appropriate pedal force that corresponds to intended braking force to be added up with regen to match intended deceleration. Mapping regen to gas is `set_motor_torque(1.25 * gas_pedal - 25);` and that's much simpler.

100% of possible system capacity to accept regenerative charge on a smaller battery system will be a smaller absolute number than 100% of possible on a larger battery. If you assume everything else is constant, motor, inverter, battery C-rating etc.

And when regenerative breaking is not enough, a series hybrid can still apply compression breaking, before resorting to brakes.

I won't speak to your '22 Escape, but I've driven countless hybrids going back to a '04 Prius and none of them were brake-free in general use. EVs really are.

I first changed the brakes on my Mitsubishi Space Star (combustion) after 13 years. It is a small car, less than 1000kg, so there is little for the brakes to do. If we produced more percentage of small cars, many environmental risks would be reduced. And btw.: The tires are now 19 years old and still good (less weight, less abrasion!).

The difference is neither of those generates gasoline on an ICE vehicle.

And how often did you engine break with that ICE car when driving around the city? Because I did it only when driving down extreme slopes. It also cannot do a full stop.

With an EV I don't touch breaks unless in situations I fail to/couldn't predict (maybe up to 10% of all speed reductions and even less stops).

I have an ICE car and motorcycle, and an EV. The EV slows down much more quickly when slowing down, to the point where it's a good replacement for the brake, as opposed to the ICE vehicles, where you need to use the brake a lot more. It's not comparable.

Can’t really compare the engine braking of a Model Y and a ICE vehicle to be honest.

I also like the noise, but it is noise pollution that is very annoying to everyone else.

We have owned 4 EVs and each allow you to configure the regen braking strength. You'll need another reason to not buy one.

To be constructive, took me a little over a week to get used to. Also i test drove four, and absolutely hated 2 of them. One felt very similar to my ICE car (VW ID4). Eventually settled on ioniq and after a week, it quickly became my favorite driving car ever (which coming from sporty manual transmissions, is not at all what i expected or why i bought it).

All to say, check out a few to be sure, im still shocked how much i love driving this thing (and how criminally fast it is, totally absurd).

I don't think this comment should be down-voted since it is indeed a real point of difference and it is worth discussing.

The key takeaway is that there are differences to driving an EV to driving an ICE vehicle. Equally those differences are in fact easy to adjust to given a bit of practice.

Of course cars have always had different control options. Automatic and Manual gearboxes spring to mind. When I first learned some cars had a gear selector as an arm on the steering column, and so on.

EVs like a somewhat gentler foot, because the torque is instant, so a heavy foot is likely to be a more uncomfortable ride.

So yes, different cars, different styles. But of course we adjust very quickly, and its not really difficult to drive anything- it just takes a bit of practice.

> you have to constantly ride the gas pedal.

Are you not? Do you drive by blipping the gas every few seconds?

I've had Uber drivers do this and it is annoying bordering on nauseating as a passenger. It is probably pretty bad for mileage and transmission wear as well (constantly taking up and releasing the backlash in the gears).

I’ve got regenerative breaking on my EV without one pedal driving, it acts just like my other car does.

You can toggle off regen braking on most EVs

Firstly, most EVs that have strong regenerative braking ("one-pedal") setups allow you to adjust the strength or turn it off. Tesla, as usual, is the outlier in this respect.

Secondly, I rented an EV for a week and by the end of it actually preferred the strong regen setting. It was convenient in stop-start traffic, and on a twisty road, you could use it to tighten the nose as you entered the corner.

Some EVs allow different levels of regenerative braking to be selected. The Hyundai/Kia E-GMP-based cars have level 0-3 plus a 1-pedal mode, and also an "auto" mode that slows down more based on radar proximity to the car ahead.

> test drove

> was difficult to get used to

To ask the obvious, how used to something are you going to get on a test drive? It takes time.

Take a look at more EVs. There are many that aren't as opinionated about how you should drive as the one you drove (a Tesla, by any chance?).

For example here is how it works in Hyundai EVs (and I'd guess Kia too). It is easy to set them so that they drive very similar to an ICE. I believe several others also work similarly. There are only a few that try to really push you to one pedal driving.

1. When use explicitly use the brake pedal that car uses regenerative braking unless you are trying to stop faster than regeneration can handle in which case it will also use the friction brakes.

There may be a setting somewhere in the settings menus where you can adjust how strong the braking is, but I don't remember because the way the car comes from the factory the brake peddle feels a lot like an ICE car's brake peddle.

2. There is a regeneration level setting that controls what happens when you ease up on the accelerator or remove your foot from it. This setting has 6 possible settings: Level 0, 1, 2, 3, i-Pedal, and Auto.

There are two paddles on the steering wheel that let you move through these settings quickly and easily, and you can do this while driving so you are free to pick whatever setting fits the conditions and your mood the best. Here's what they do.

• In level 0 there is no braking associated with the accelerator. Take your foot off and the car coasts is if it was in neutral.

• Level 1 provides a small amount of automatic braking when you let up on the accelerator. In ICE terms it is similar to the engine braking you would get on level ground going fast enough to be in 3rd gear in a 3 speed automatic. You slow down faster than coasting, but not so fast that if you were on the freeway and your felt the need to shake your right leg around a little it would slow enough to be a problem.

• Levels 2 and 3 step up the amount of automatic braking. 3 is enough that in city driving most of the time you can be quite leisurely when it comes to moving your foot from the accelerator to the brake at most stop signs, but it will not bring your car to a complete stop. It will get quite slow and then creep at that speed.

• i-Pedal is one pedal driving mode and corresponds to what that EV you test drove was doing. In this the braking is similar to level 3 as far as aggressiveness goes, but it will take you all the way to a stop most of the time. Once you get used to it you should be able to do most city driving and most highway driving without touching the brake pedal. About the only times you would need the brake pedal (outside of emergencies) is if a light changes on you when you are too close to the intersection.

• Auto mode automatically switches between 0, 1, 2, and 3 based on the distance to the vehicle in front (using the same system that adaptive cruise control uses) and the slope of the road. If you are on the freeway for example with a good distance between cars it will be in 0 or 1. In the city where you are close to the next car it might be in 2 or 3.

• If you press and hold the "increase regen level" paddle for at least 0.5 seconds it will switch from whatever your current setting is to i-Pedal and stay in i-Pedal as long as you continue to hold the paddle. Release the paddle and it switches back to whatever your previous setting was.

This system gives you plenty of flexibility and you should be able to easily find a setting you like. Some people really like one pedal driving and so they can just put it in i-Pedal and leave it there (with a slight annoyance...when you turn the car off in i-Pedal it comes back on in level 3, so you will have to hit the regen up paddle once).

Some people set it to one of the numbered levels and leave it there (again with slight annoyance at startup where it comes on at 1 so they need a paddle flick or two).

Some people use the paddles instead of the brake pedal, mixing levels to get the kind of deceleration curve they want.

I normally drive in level 0, with an occasional day or two in i-Pedal just for a change of pace, but if I'm coming up on a series of roundabouts I might switch it to i-Pedal. That's great for say a 35 mph road with 10-15 mph roundabouts every couple of blocks. (If it is just one roundabout I'd probably use the "hold regen up paddle for 0.5 seconds" option to just turn on i-Pedal for that intersection.