You can see the little brake lights and turn signals light up on the on-screen car too. I don't know how much if any lag there is between the real brake lights and the on-screen representation.

 

Unless your car is MCR, in which case the onscreen brake lights are very hard to tell when they come on. Need to get Tesla to fix that!

I used the rear camera to check - there is no lag between the real brake lights and on-screen. Same with the blinkers. Perfectly synchronized.

I do have one other little pet peeve on this: you know how you use regen braking to slow down to a crawl, then finally transfer your foot to the brake pedal to halt? The brake lights don't stay on the whole time -- they turn off after the regen has tapered off and then they come back on when you hit the brake pedal. Car motion is smooth, but it must look weird to the person following - why do the brakes go on, off and on again? It nags me ... but maybe I'm just a little OCD about stuff like that.

 

I must be blind or otherwise colorblind. I cannot seem to see any indication of the little brake light mentioned by @Rich M.
I even recorded the drive and from the screen recording I was unable to make out where to see for those little lights. Maybe I need new pair of eyes:grinning:

 

Since you own a red car you probably have a red car displayed on your screen so it will be near impossible to see the little red brake lights when they come on the display. I have a midnight silver displayed so it's easier to see the red lights (but still somewhat difficult) I have read on some forums that people with red cars have asked their service center to change the color of their displayed cars to something other than red to help with that issue.

 

I do see it on my screen.

 

I wish it was optional for regen to trigger the brake lights. Between Autopilot freaking out, aggressive braking behavior when speed limit changes while using TACC, and just trying to coast in general, other drivers must think I don't know how to drive.

There are a few other reasons, but it's something I miss from my LEAF driving days.

 

I wish it was optional for regen to trigger the brake lights. Between Autopilot freaking out, aggressive braking behavior when speed limit changes while using TACC, and just trying to coast in general, other drivers must think I don't know how to drive.

Federal regulations specify a rate of deceleration that must trigger the brake lights so it's not an option for Tesla to make it optional. And if you're just trying to coast but accidentally go into slight regen, that's not enough to trigger the brake lights so I don't think you need to worry about what other drivers think.

 

@PNWmisty
Interesting read

 

When you use Autopilot, you start to notice that sometimes cars without brake lights on are slowing down, and sometimes cars with brake lights on are not. Autopilot relies on radar (currently), and just slows down when they actually slow down. Just interesting to note the exceptions to what you'd expect.

 

It will take European drivers some time to get accustomed to the idea that the driver of a car that shows braking lights for mundane tasks such as following speed limits or slowing down for curves is not necessarily a bad driver -- they may just be driving an EV ;-)

Whether the brake lights come on or not during regen appears to be a function of how quickly you are decelerating. If you just ease up on the accelerator pedal a bit to adjust for speed limits or curves, then the braking lights won't come on. If you are decelerating quickly, then it's probably a good idea to let the person behind you know that they'll be closing on you exceptionally quickly.

 

I used to follow the advice of this thread, but now I have second thoughts and switched my car to: low regen, creep mode on.

Earlier this week, driving in the evening, I had been almost rear ended after using standard (full) regen to come to almost complete stop (<10 kmph) before making turn into a side road. I did some extra testing and I believe regen braking / brake light functionality is problematic.

Brake light may turn on during _strong_ deceleration, but will turn off once car slows down significantly and rate of deceleration is low. You end up with almost stopped / very slow moving car with no brake lights on, which is technically correct, but will confuse average driver arriving behind you.

In same situation, a typical car (gasoline + automatic transmission) would be coasting on the brake, resulting in brake light on. Driver behind me was accustomed to typical behaviour.

I am not really sure how Tesla can fix it, for now I switched creep mode to on and regen to low which forces me to apply the brake and turn on the brake light.

Of course it is only a problem in locations where vast majority of cars have automatic transmission and the drivers expect brake lights to come on 'generously'

 

I am not really sure how Tesla can fix it...

Unfortunately, Tesla can't fix peoples' inability to pay attention.

 

I was thinking a bit more about it and a better brake light algorithm might be:
- to keep the brake light ON following a deceleration to a very low speed or stop
- switch brake light OFF following acceleration

This would mimic more closely behaviour of a typical automatic transmission car, while still behaving reasonably in stop and go traffic.

I need to give credit to youtube user model3man, who created awesome video ( youtube: aijuAjxCZ7A) documenting how his model 3 was rear ended and sadly killed, during day time on a straight road. I am not sure what were his creep mode / regen settings, but having seen his the video a day before being nearly rear-ended got me think about it more.

 

This is a choice the engineers may be getting wrong, generally, in my view: Do they want the car to do the logical thing, or do what (good) drivers usually do? Do they impose good engineering priniciples, or accept that it is dangerous to have the car doing things that will surprise ordinary drivers? On auto pilot, should the car go down the middle of the lane in curves, or hug the inside lane marker as nearly all drivers do?

My opinion: All else being equal, the car should appear to be driven by a good human driver, whatever that is.

 

Are the brake lights on during hard regen without brake pedal applied?
I am just constantly worried about the car behind me.

 

For hard braking, yes. You can actually see the lights come on on the screen if you look close enough.

I had the same concern when I first started using TACC. Or even just how frequently the brake lights come on when regen.

 

Yes, they are on — and you can see them come on, on the picture of your car on the screen. They’re really tiny though.

~Charlie

 

I like Europe's flashing brake lights during hard braking. One more additional message to the traffic behind them. As a truck driver I used this feature frequently by turning on four way flashers. I still do the same in my passenger vehicles. If you practice a bit, your hand will go to the correct switch without having to look.
I also am in favor of the rear fog light. Problem here is that Audi and Mercedes drivers don't know the have that feature, so it's on all the time.

 

TriMet buses in Portland had a good feature for awhile. Mounted on the back was a strip with three lights in it. The green light was on it the bus was under power, the amber light light was on for coasting or engine braking, and the red light came on in addition to the standard brake lights to let you know that they were stopping. I don't think that it caught on though. I don't recall seeing it for awhile.