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If you’ve been following the channel for a little while,

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you may know that I think an awful lot about automotive lighting.

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Brake lights and turn signals take up far more of my brainspace 
than they arguably should -

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but, of course, when needlessly ambiguous combined stop and turn signals
keep finding their way onto new car models

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in a world where the obviously better solution of separating those two signals

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into dedicated amber indicator lights for turning
and dedicated red stop lamps for stopping

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is not only an option but in fact required in pretty much
every country on the planet except for this one for some reason -

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well it’s prone to happen.

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But I’ve already made a video about that.

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[clunk]

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This video is about a whole new and entirely different brake light problem!

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You didn’t used to have to think about 
what makes a car’s brake lights come on.

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They came on whenever you depressed the brake pedal.

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And since the brake pedal was the only thing that could slow the car enough to warrant the brake lights coming on,

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a simple switch on that pedal was all we needed.

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But this is swiftly changing.

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Modern cars often slow down all on their own -

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maybe you’re using radar adaptive cruise control,
or maybe the car has automatic emergency braking.

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Or perhaps you have an electric car with a one-pedal driving mode.

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And with these new features, 
we now have no choice but to control the brake lights with…

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software.

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[thunderclap]

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As the old saying goes, one man’s software is another man’s nightmare,

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and somebody at Hyundai (and quite possibly Kia) really dropped the ball.

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The way the Hyundai Ioniq 5 handles its brake lights,

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or at least the US-market 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 with software as-delivered,

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is so astonishingly bad that I think it warrants a recall.

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And I assure you that’s not hyperbole.

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Take a look, here I am going 60 miles an hour on a country road.

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And through the magic of buying two GoPros,

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here’s the back of the car and its third brake light.

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Watch as I bring the car to a stop.

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[A descending whirr from the electric motors as wind and road noise diminish]

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Notice that the brake lights have not illuminated,
but the vehicle is rapidly slowing.

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If this accelerometer app of mine is to be believed,

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it’s pulling about .25G with a peak almost .3.

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It only takes about 13 seconds to come to a stop from 60 miles an hour, but someone following me would have no warning that I was slowing down so rapidly.

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In fact, they’d only get the warning once I had stopped.

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A little late there, bud.

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Why didn’t the brake lights illuminate?

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That’s a great question to ask Hyundai,

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but in the meantime I can tell you that although
I was indeed commanding the car to stop,

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I never touched its brake pedal to do that.

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I was using the car’s i-Pedal mode,
which is Hyundai’s Apple-esque name for one-pedal driving.

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I’ll explain what that is in a moment,

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but what’s perhaps even worse than the car’s just atrocious behavior is that,
as far as I can tell,

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this is not actually violating any federal motor vehicle safety standards thanks to a technicality and poorly-worded, outdated regulations.

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Yay!

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To understand the problem here,
first it’s important to understand what one-pedal-driving is and does.

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An electric car, just like any other, has an accelerator pedal and a brake pedal.

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And they work just like you would expect:
press that one to go faster,

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and press that one to slow down.

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Hyundai even helpfully labeled them plus and minus in case you forget.

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In an ordinary car, the big one engages the friction brakes.

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But an electric car, along with most hybrids, can turn its electric motor into a generator and will use it to slow down whenever possible.

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This regenerative braking allows it to capture the kinetic energy of the moving car and put it back into the battery

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rather than just turn it into heat as brake pads do.

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And that makes the car more energy-efficient.

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The first hybrid cars (like most to this day)
use the brake pedal to control this function.

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Rather than immediately engage with the brake master cylinder 
to squeeze the calipers together,

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the first portion of the brake pedal’s travel functions as a sensor input which gives the car a braking request value.

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If you stomp on the pedal and go past that sensor region it does directly engage with the friction brakes -

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you don’t want a computer getting in the way of that.

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But except in panic-stops or low-traction situations,

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these blended-braking systems will use the electric motor to recapture as much energy as possible

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before blending in the friction brakes either when you need
more braking force than the motor can muster

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or simply to bring the car to a complete stop.

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But the accelerator pedal is also a computer input.

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It hasn’t been tugging on a real throttle cable for many years regardless of what’s powering the car -

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it simply tells the car’s powertrain control module essentially how much you’re pushing on it, and then the PCM does whatever it needs to do to make the car go.

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But now that we have regen braking in the mix, 
you could also use the accelerator to make the car slow down.

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Rather than put zero forward power at the top of the pedal’s range of motion,

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you can put it down a ways and make the top quarter or so of the pedal’s travel range provide a braking input,

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with increasing brake intensity the more you let off the pedal.

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Doing this allows the driver to both accelerate
and slow down with the same pedal,

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and when implemented well, it allows you to never touch
the brake pedal except in emergencies.

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This is cool and lots of people really like this one-pedal driving,

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but it means we can no longer rely on the brake pedal switch alone
to turn on the brake lights.

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And in case you weren’t aware,

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a car’s brake lights ARE SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT!

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They warn the driver behind you that you’re slowing down - potentially quite abruptly.

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You want that to be clear in an instant because
you’re not in control of the car behind you,

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somebody else is.

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And if you don’t give that somebody else sufficient
warning that your vehicle is slowing down right now,

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they might just run into you.

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And both parties involved would rather that not happen,

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which is the entire reason brake lights exist, dontcha know.

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Now, this newfangled electrical car
still has a traditional brake pedal switch like cars of old.

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It needs it to enable the shift interlock and the whole

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“depress brake to start vehicle” thing,

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but it will still light up the rear end nice and bright.

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And the car does in fact rely on it for the brake lights in some settings.

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When I drive the car in either its Level 0 or Level 1 regen settings,
that brake pedal switch is the only thing that turns the brake lights on.

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Right, I should explain that.

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Uh, these levels here adjust
how aggressively you want the vehicle to use its regenerative braking

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as you let off the accelerator.

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Electric car nerds call this "throttle-lift-off regen," and you
switch between modes with these shift paddles.

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Level 0 provides no regen at all, and moving to level 1 is almost indistinguishable from coasting;

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there’s just a teeny bit of resistance,
similar to what a car with a traditional automatic transmission feels like.

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Hit level 2, though, and now the car starts
noticeably slowing down whenever you lift off the gas pedal.

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Enough to warrant brake light activation, and sure enough,

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Hyundai thought of that!

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In this mode, the brake lights come on once you’ve released the accelerator.

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You have to let off all the way, but that’s OK.

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Even just barely touching the gas pedal almost entirely removes the braking effect.

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Move up to level 3 and now the throttle-lift-off regen is getting pretty aggressive.

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The throttle mapping has changed enough to where you can actually modulate the amount of regen you’re getting at the top of the pedal’s travel.

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Yet… the brake lights are still only coming on when you’re completely off the pedal.

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This doesn’t bode well.

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No it doesn’t.

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But we still aren’t in one-pedal-driving mode.

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Although it slows you down fairly aggressively, level 3 regen
will not bring the car to a stop -

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you need to press on the brake to stop completely,
and once you let off the car will creep forward like a traditional automatic

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(unless, that is, you use the auto-hold function - Hyundai was not shy
about giving you every conceivable option on this car).

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Engage the i-Pedal mode, though, and now the car offers true one-pedal driving.

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Let off the accelerator and the car will provide
aggressive regen braking as long as it can

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before seamlessly engaging the friction brakes
to bring you all the way to a complete stop.

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And I must say, the powertrain tuners over at Hyundai did an excellent job here.

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There’s a big range of travel in the “negative”
portion of the throttle input which allows quite a lot of brake modulation with practice.

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And the stops it makes?

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Absolute perfection.

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It’s nearly impossible to bring a car to a complete stop without at least a little bit of jerk at the end as the brake pads lock the rotors in-place,

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but this car stops with as much finesse as those ultra-smooth elevators
where you can’t really feel that the cab has stopped

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but then the doors open so apparently it did.

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It’s literally just like that with almost every stop.

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It’s amazing.

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But the brake lights.

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Somebody forgot about the brake lights!

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They still, even in i-Pedal mode, only come on when your foot is completely off the pedal.

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And this is terrible!

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Remember that “quite a lot of brake modulation”
thing I said just a few sentences ago?

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Near the top of the pedal there’s a lot of regen to be had -
way more than you get in levels 2 or 3.

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But the brake lights will not illuminate
unless and until your foot is completely off the pedal,

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so if you stay near but not quite at the top, they just don't illuminate.

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And that’s bad!

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That’s what was going on in my 60-zero stop earlier in the video.

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By lifting almost-but-not-quite entirely off the gas pedal,

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the car slows down very aggressively.

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In fact, if you watch the power “gauge”

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you can see that the car is performing almost the maximum amount of regen braking that it can.

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Yet, the brake lights never lit up because I didn’t completely release the pedal.

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I know you’re just watching a video and seeing falling numbers on a speedometer probably won’t convey just how much the
car slows down here,

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but it’s a lot.

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Enough to dislodge some loose articles in the car in an earlier take.

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[ka-thunk as loose articles are dislodged in this earlier take]

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Yet still - no brake lights.

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This is, quite frankly, dangerous.

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And it’s likely my car’s E-GMP platform mates
like the Kia EV6 and Genesis GV60 have the same problem.

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If you use the one-pedal-driving mode, you’re risking being rear-ended,

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possibly getting pulled over and ticketed for malfunctioning brake lights,

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or even potentially being found partially at-fault in a rear-end collision if the driver who hit you can prove your brake lights weren’t working -

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which, with the proliferation of dashcams,
is definitely not out of the question.

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Once I realized the car was behaving this way,

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which took quite a while as you generally don’t get to see what your brake lights are doing unless you’re paying close attention at night,

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I stopped using i-Pedal mode.

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Hyundai spoiled a really quite good one-pedal-driving mode with this little oversight.

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One reason some folks don’t like one-pedal driving
is that it can be quite nauseating.

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Going from acceleration to braking and right back
is one way to make your passengers pretty queasy,

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and when a one-pedal driving mode doesn’t have a decent dead-band in the center to allow for coasting

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and a wide-range of differing brake intensities at the top of the pedal,

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it’s really hard to avoid a rubber-bandy, stomach-upsety
back and forth sloshing motion.

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But this car manages to avoid that quite well
so long as you use the pedal gently.

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But if you’re using the pedal that gently the brake lights basically don’t work!

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They won't come on until you’ve come to a stop.

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And that’s not what they’re supposed to do!

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And it’s not like this is a new problem at all.

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You may remember that back in 2016,
Chevrolet released a frumpy little egg-shaped EV called the Bolt.

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And from the very beginning
these cars offered a fantastic one-pedal driving mode.

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It works just as well as Hyundai’s, perfect stops and all,

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although to get full regen you actually need to squeeze this little paddle on the back of the steering wheel.

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But, that adds its own element of fun.

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Now, because General Motors suffers from this chronic condition called

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“being GM”

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they thought that re-using the parts bin shifter from a Buick
would be a fine way to select between drive modes so...

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that’s what they did.

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Put it in Drive and it behaves like a normal automatic,
creep and all,

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but bump it back again to L and you’re in one-pedal mode.

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You know, L for one-pedal.

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Despite that, somebody at GM thankfully realized that a one-pedal drive mode
would need a way to turn on the brake lights,

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so they snuck an accelerometer somewhere in the car that will activate the brake lights if the car is pulling more than about .2G of deceleration.

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So, when driving the Bolt in “low gear” the brake lights work just fine.

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They come on well before my foot is off the pedal,

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and in fact what the pedal is doing doesn’t actually matter at all.

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If that accelerometer detects enough slowing doing is happening,

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on go the brake lights.

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Truthfully, though obviously miles better than what my new car does,

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I think that this solution is way overcomplicated and a bit flawed.

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For a start, being accelerometer-based,

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the brake lights go out once you have come to a stop.

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That’s technically fine, I suppose,

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but living in a country where almost everybody drives an automatic transmission,

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being stopped in traffic without an illuminated rear-end
tends to worry me a little.

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Supposedly this was fixed for 2022 model Bolts,
and hopefully GM continues that behavior with their new EV offerings.

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But my bigger question is - why did you use an accelerometer at all?

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Just use the accelerator pedal position
and turn on the brake lights when it’s somewhere that requests regen braking.

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When I first got my new car, I thought that’s what Hyundai had done.

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One of the first things I did was take it out at night and watch the rear window glass to see what the brake lights were doing with one-pedal-mode engaged.

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I could tell that they were behaving based on the pedal position,
 and they stayed on when stopped, so I thought

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“good job, Hyundai, you didn’t overthink this like GM did”.

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But I didn’t realize that they were only coming on
when the pedal was all-the-way let off until,

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well, until a couple of months ago actually.

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Now I realize they underthought this by a staggering degree.

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Now, so far I’ve been talking about electric
cars and their one-pedal driving mode,

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but remember that there are plenty of combustion-powered
cars out there with adaptive cruise control.

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Those cars will automatically adjust speed
and following distance to the car ahead,

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letting you drive miles and miles without touching any pedals.

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Those systems need the capability to brake quite aggressively
in case you get cut off or if there’s sudden traffic,

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so they most definitely need a way to turn on the brake lights.

209
00:15:37,350 --> 00:15:40,785
Luckily, this wasn’t something Hyundai overlooked.

210
00:15:40,785 --> 00:15:48,727
The brake lights perform just fine when using adaptive cruise control, so it’s really only the i-Pedal mode that’s problematic in my car.

211
00:15:48,727 --> 00:15:50,932
And honestly that sorta makes sense

212
00:15:50,932 --> 00:15:57,267
as Hyundai puts the same highway driving assist technology that my car has in plenty of their conventional cars,

213
00:15:57,267 --> 00:15:59,857
and I doubt the systems are all that different.

214
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:03,466
But… does that actually make sense?

215
00:16:03,466 --> 00:16:10,466
Why would the car turn on the brake lights without brake pedal input
when using adaptive cruise, but notin one-pedal driving?

216
00:16:10,466 --> 00:16:15,333
I can’t claim to know Hyundai's thought process or motivations,

217
00:16:15,333 --> 00:16:20,910
but in the regulations that govern when stop lamps
are required to illuminate here in the US,

218
00:16:20,910 --> 00:16:25,747
there’s a key distinction between service brakes and supplemental brakes.

219
00:16:25,747 --> 00:16:28,379
Strap in, folks, we’re gettin’ in the weeds.

220
00:16:28,379 --> 00:16:35,660
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108;
Lamps, reflective devices, and associated equipment states that

221
00:16:35,660 --> 00:16:41,379
Stop Lamps are to be steady-burning
and must be activated upon application of the service brakes.

222
00:16:42,359 --> 00:16:43,254
That’s it.

223
00:16:43,254 --> 00:16:48,657
There’s no standard for G-force or meters per second squared deceleration
or anything like that,

224
00:16:48,657 --> 00:16:52,695
they just have to come on when you apply the service brakes.

225
00:16:52,695 --> 00:16:54,270
But what are the service brakes?

226
00:16:54,270 --> 00:16:56,010
What does that mean?

227
00:16:56,010 --> 00:17:00,418
Well, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 105 says

228
00:17:00,418 --> 00:17:05,225
“Each vehicle must be equipped with a service brake system acting on all wheels.

229
00:17:05,225 --> 00:17:10,683
Wear of the service brake must be compensated for
by means of a system of automatic adjustment.”

230
00:17:10,683 --> 00:17:14,980
So, in other words, they just mean the regular ol’ brakes.

231
00:17:14,980 --> 00:17:17,569
But, of course, that’s kind of ambiguous.

232
00:17:17,569 --> 00:17:23,018
Regenerative braking systems
often don’t actually engage the friction brakes until necessary,

233
00:17:23,018 --> 00:17:30,859
and since many hybrids and EVs are two-wheel drive,
regen braking wouldn’t be considered acting upon all wheels.

234
00:17:30,859 --> 00:17:40,678
Doin’ a Ctrl-F on standard 105 reveals that regenerative
braking is a thing the standards writers are aware of, so that’s good I guess.

235
00:17:40,678 --> 00:17:43,278
But is that part of the service brakes?

236
00:17:43,278 --> 00:17:45,379
Well… it depends.

237
00:17:45,379 --> 00:17:52,954
The standard says that “For an EV equipped with RBS, the RBS is considered to be part of the service brake system

238
00:17:52,954 --> 00:18:01,662
if it is automatically controlled by an application of the service brake control, if there is no means provided for the driver to disconnect or otherwise deactivate it,

239
00:18:01,662 --> 00:18:06,943
and if it is activated in all transmission positions, including neutral.”

240
00:18:06,943 --> 00:18:08,579
And there we have it.

241
00:18:08,579 --> 00:18:15,326
When using adaptive cruise control, my car is almost certainly applying an automated input to the service brake system,

242
00:18:15,326 --> 00:18:21,774
as would be the case for any Hyundai that’s not electric,
so the brake lights must and will activate.

243
00:18:21,774 --> 00:18:28,744
But since its one-pedal driving mode can be deactivated,
and it also doesn’t work when the car is in neutral (I tried),

244
00:18:28,744 --> 00:18:31,940
that’s not considered part of its service brakes.

245
00:18:31,940 --> 00:18:36,100
So, technically, it’s not required to light up the rear end.

246
00:18:36,100 --> 00:18:40,721
It’s not actually violating anything by having brake lights that don’t always work.

247
00:18:41,533 --> 00:18:45,417
This is utterly and completely bonkers and needs to be fixed ASAP.

248
00:18:46,061 --> 00:18:49,150
You don’t even need to rely on my interpretation here.

249
00:18:49,150 --> 00:18:56,359
Back in 2009, a lawyer for Eaton asked the NHTSA for clarification
on when the brake lights should activate

250
00:18:56,359 --> 00:19:02,993
as Eaton was working on some sort of hydraulic regenerative launch system thingy
called Hydraulic Launch Assist.

251
00:19:02,993 --> 00:19:08,895
It wasn’t a regenerative braking system as defined by standard 105
because it wasn’t electric,

252
00:19:08,895 --> 00:19:16,382
which meant it definitely wasn’t part of the service brakes,
and they wanted to know whether the brake lights should come on when using it.

253
00:19:16,382 --> 00:19:24,067
NHTSA wrote back that “Because the HLA system is a supplemental brake system (i.e., not the service brakes),

254
00:19:24,067 --> 00:19:30,250
the standard does not require the stop lamps
to be activated upon activation of the HLA system.”

255
00:19:31,118 --> 00:19:36,837
Couldn’t be any plainer, if it’s not the service brakes then the brake lights don’t matter.

256
00:19:36,837 --> 00:19:39,357
However, they went on to say that

257
00:19:39,357 --> 00:19:44,733
“We note, consistent with past interpretations, that FMVSS No. 108

258
00:19:44,733 --> 00:19:53,634
does not prohibit the activation of the stop lamps when the HLA system is retarding the speed of the vehicle after the accelerator has been released.

259
00:19:53,634 --> 00:20:06,237
The SAE Recommended Practices on stop lamps that are incorporated by reference
into Standard No. 108, SAE J586 and SAE J1398, define stop lamps as

260
00:20:06,237 --> 00:20:12,808
lamps which indicate the intention of the operator of a vehicle to stop
or diminish speed by braking.

261
00:20:12,808 --> 00:20:18,313
If the vehicle is designed so that release of the accelerator 
results in braking action from the HLA,

262
00:20:18,313 --> 00:20:23,743
we believe this condition can be viewed as an intention
by the operator to diminish speed by braking.”

263
00:20:24,611 --> 00:20:26,007
So, in other words:

264
00:20:26,007 --> 00:20:29,725
you can turn on the brake lights,
but you don’t have to.

265
00:20:29,725 --> 00:20:35,830
Clearly the SAE has a much more reasonable
understanding of what the stop lamps are for -

266
00:20:35,830 --> 00:20:42,617
they warn other drivers that you’re slowing down, and not that 
“you’ve applied the vehicle’s service brake system”.

267
00:20:42,617 --> 00:20:47,147
But the problem here is that the SAE isn’t a regulatory body.

268
00:20:47,147 --> 00:20:51,282
They’re just, like, some society of engineers or something

269
00:20:51,282 --> 00:20:55,475
and they can make recommendations but not law.

270
00:20:55,475 --> 00:21:03,665
So whether and how the brake lights work when using a one-pedal driving mode is entirely up to automakers right now,

271
00:21:03,665 --> 00:21:06,316
and that should not be a decision left up to automakers

272
00:21:06,316 --> 00:21:08,690
because apparently they suck at it.

273
00:21:08,690 --> 00:21:11,841
They might really overcomplicate things like GM did,

274
00:21:11,841 --> 00:21:15,337
or they might completely forget about it like Hyundai did.

275
00:21:15,337 --> 00:21:17,938
There’s even a third option!

276
00:21:17,938 --> 00:21:21,868
We now have a bit of a “boy who cried wolf” problem on our hands.

277
00:21:21,868 --> 00:21:28,055
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this,
but some electric cars activate their brake lights way too frequently.

278
00:21:28,055 --> 00:21:35,044
My presumption is that these cars are simply too sensitive
and kick them on with the tiniest amounts of deceleration.

279
00:21:35,044 --> 00:21:42,648
That is arguably just as bad at not having brake lights at all because that diminishes the urgency and importance of the signal.

280
00:21:43,656 --> 00:21:45,736
You know what would really clear this up?

281
00:21:45,736 --> 00:21:50,106
A regulation based on the vehicle’s actual rate of deceleration.

282
00:21:50,106 --> 00:21:54,767
And here’s, after digging through all these regulations, where my mind was blown.

283
00:21:54,767 --> 00:22:00,960
I thought to myself, “surely Europe,
the land of the amber turn signal, will have thought of this.”

284
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:03,494
Guess what? You haven’t either!

285
00:22:03,494 --> 00:22:06,450
As a matter of fact, your regulations are even worse than ours

286
00:22:06,450 --> 00:22:15,848
because they actually FORBID activation of the brake lights 
specifically(!) when slowing down an electric vehicle with regenerative braking.

287
00:22:15,848 --> 00:22:18,350
Look, Regulation No. 13-H,

288
00:22:18,350 --> 00:22:22,226
Uniform provisions concerning the approval of passenger cars with regard to braking

289
00:22:22,226 --> 00:22:27,652
section 5.2.22, Generation of a braking signal to illuminate stop lamps.

290
00:22:27,652 --> 00:22:29,408
Things were looking good here with

291
00:22:29,408 --> 00:22:35,115
“Activation of the service braking system by ‘automatically commanded braking’ shall generate the signal mentioned above.

292
00:22:35,115 --> 00:22:41,418
However, when the retardation generated is less than 0.7 m/s2, 
the signal may be suppressed.”

293
00:22:41,418 --> 00:22:45,792
You specifically mentioned .7 meters per second squared, great job!

294
00:22:45,792 --> 00:22:48,525
But then you spoiled it with

295
00:22:48,525 --> 00:22:57,365
“Electric regenerative braking systems, which produce a retarding force upon release of the throttle pedal, shall not generate a signal mentioned above.”

296
00:22:58,597 --> 00:23:00,106
WHYYYY???

297
00:23:00,610 --> 00:23:06,247
I can only presume that whoever wrote that sentence as well as all of the members involved in approving that regulation

298
00:23:06,247 --> 00:23:10,930
had never driven an electric car because this is beyond absurd.

299
00:23:10,930 --> 00:23:18,552
Regenerative braking is quite strong with
modern EVs and absolutely warrants activating the brake lights -

300
00:23:18,552 --> 00:23:22,668
may I remind you I was able to stop my car from 60 miles an hour

301
00:23:22,668 --> 00:23:25,025
(that’s 96 and a half kilometers an hour)

302
00:23:25,025 --> 00:23:26,458
in 13 seconds

303
00:23:26,458 --> 00:23:28,361
(or 13 seconds).

304
00:23:28,361 --> 00:23:36,401
It is absolutely astounding that anyone would FORBID the generation of a signal to activate the brake lights in that situation

305
00:23:36,401 --> 00:23:39,497
merely because it was throttle-lift-off regen,

306
00:23:39,497 --> 00:23:46,997
especially when my car’s average rate of deceleration was about .25G, or about 2.4 meters per second squared

307
00:23:46,997 --> 00:23:57,212
which is a lot higher than the 0.7 m/s2 you just mentioned as the threshold by which that signal may be suppressed by an “automatically commanded braking” occurrence.

308
00:23:57,212 --> 00:23:59,565
This is just bonkers!

309
00:23:59,565 --> 00:24:02,885
And wouldn’t ya know it, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

310
00:24:02,885 --> 00:24:07,713
A proposed update to UN regulation 13-H wants to clear this up.

311
00:24:07,713 --> 00:24:15,890
In this lovely powerpoint I found, it is very correctly pointed out that
“The stop lamp signal should reflect the intention to decelerate.”

312
00:24:15,890 --> 00:24:21,576
and that 
“The driver of a following vehicle does not care about the kind of braking!”

313
00:24:21,576 --> 00:24:24,981
I mean, yeah! I thought that was obvious!

314
00:24:24,981 --> 00:24:33,691
So, they’d like to eliminate all this gobbledygook and simply make it such that if the car is slowing down by more than 1.3 meters per second squared,

315
00:24:33,691 --> 00:24:40,791
the signal SHALL be generated regardless
of what propels the vehicle or why it might be slowing.

316
00:24:40,791 --> 00:24:43,116
Hopefully this proposed change gets adopt -

317
00:24:43,116 --> 00:24:44,218
What? Excuse me?

318
00:24:45,366 --> 00:24:46,731
It did?

319
00:24:46,731 --> 00:24:48,294
Ju. jus.. just back in March?

320
00:24:48,294 --> 00:24:49,693
Really?

321
00:24:49,693 --> 00:24:53,168
Why did I get this document then when I was looking for...

322
00:24:53,168 --> 00:24:55,424
Ah, Google, being screwy again.

323
00:24:55,424 --> 00:24:56,571
OK, um...

324
00:24:56,571 --> 00:24:57,378
Hm.

325
00:24:57,378 --> 00:25:00,973
Well I guess I got a little overly animated just now.

326
00:25:00,973 --> 00:25:03,320
But it did take you quite a while -

327
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:09,667
EVs with serious regen braking abilities and one-pedal drive modes have been around for about a decade now.

328
00:25:09,667 --> 00:25:12,466
But at least you got around to fixing it.

329
00:25:12,466 --> 00:25:15,946
Ah, but did you fix the boy who cried wolf problem?

330
00:25:15,946 --> 00:25:17,530
I’m not sure you did.

331
00:25:17,530 --> 00:25:22,866
Yeah, the brake lights shall come on when exceeding 1.3 m/s/s deceleration,

332
00:25:22,866 --> 00:25:26,549
but you said they “may” come on at rates below.

333
00:25:26,549 --> 00:25:32,312
I see you thought to make sure there are methods to prevent the lights from flashing erratically or flickering or whatever,

334
00:25:32,312 --> 00:25:36,719
but honestly I think you should have defined a minimum deceleration value.

335
00:25:36,719 --> 00:25:40,009
We don’t need them coming on when people are just coasting.

336
00:25:40,009 --> 00:25:43,545
Still, this is much much better - and good job!

337
00:25:43,545 --> 00:25:47,555
We here in the U S of A still have a lot of work to do.

338
00:25:47,555 --> 00:25:56,037
If any of you watching happen to know someone who works at NHTSA,
the US DOT, or otherwise has sway over the federal motor vehicle safety standards,

339
00:25:56,037 --> 00:25:58,158
please send this video to them.

340
00:25:58,158 --> 00:26:05,166
And maybe also the one on the combined stop and turn signals -
removing signal ambiguity decreases reaction time

341
00:26:05,166 --> 00:26:09,922
which is actually important when operating a two ton machine at 70 miles an hour.

342
00:26:10,286 --> 00:26:14,890
I do not understand how we still find this arrangement acceptable.

343
00:26:14,890 --> 00:26:18,484
Also, if you are one of the people in charge of this stuff,

344
00:26:18,484 --> 00:26:20,635
please for the love of god get to work.

345
00:26:20,635 --> 00:26:24,176
My car should frankly not be allowed on the road as it is,

346
00:26:24,176 --> 00:26:26,958
yet there’s nothing on the books to say otherwise.

347
00:26:26,958 --> 00:26:29,086
And that’s not OK.

348
00:26:29,086 --> 00:26:30,756
And to circle back to the beginning,

349
00:26:30,756 --> 00:26:36,055
I said I think Hyundai should recall this car - and I still think that.

350
00:26:36,055 --> 00:26:42,330
But based on what I’ve uncovered
there’s technically no reason Hyundai would have to.

351
00:26:42,330 --> 00:26:50,731
Still, that doesn’t mean it’s safe to drive this car in the i-Pedal mode, and I would urge Hyundai to voluntarily recall these vehicles

352
00:26:50,731 --> 00:26:56,967
and perform a software update to make the brake lights 
actually work in a sensible fashion.

353
00:26:56,967 --> 00:27:01,364
I think we urgently need regulations similar to the ones Europe just adopted.

354
00:27:01,364 --> 00:27:04,426
That way nobody will make a car like this again.

355
00:27:04,426 --> 00:27:09,429
But until that happens, if you’re an automaker producing cars for people to drive,

356
00:27:09,429 --> 00:27:13,975
please think a little harder about what brake lights are for.

357
00:27:13,975 --> 00:27:18,874
It’s frankly inexcusable, Hyundai, that you would release this product as is.

358
00:27:18,874 --> 00:27:23,233
I mean, if GM could figure it out back in 2016…

359
00:27:23,233 --> 00:27:30,030
Now, I do want to reiterate that although my car is an EV,
and I expect lots more to be sold in the coming years,

360
00:27:30,030 --> 00:27:34,598
there’s more than just the one-pedal driving mode that we need to be thinking about.

361
00:27:34,598 --> 00:27:40,683
The first time I drove a car with adaptive cruise control
I really didn’t think about the brake lights at all,

362
00:27:40,683 --> 00:27:44,112
and in hindsight I probably should have.

363
00:27:44,112 --> 00:27:50,965
As technology changes, we can no longer rely
on a simple switch on the brake pedal for brake light activation,

364
00:27:50,965 --> 00:27:58,308
and as we’ve seen regulatory bodies are a little slow to respond - if they do at all.

365
00:27:58,308 --> 00:28:02,360
To anyone out there who drives any kind of
car that does its own braking,

366
00:28:02,360 --> 00:28:07,278
I would encourage you to figure out
what the brake lights do as it slows down.

367
00:28:07,278 --> 00:28:09,693
Maybe have a friend follow you in another car,

368
00:28:09,693 --> 00:28:15,456
or perhaps go out at night (when it’s safe)
and see what you can see in the rearview mirror.

369
00:28:15,456 --> 00:28:18,853
Nissan, as it turns out,
put in a little display in their new Ariya

370
00:28:18,853 --> 00:28:21,319
that will show you what the brake lights are doing -

371
00:28:21,319 --> 00:28:25,605
and I’m the type of guy to think that’s a pretty useful idea actually.

372
00:28:25,605 --> 00:28:30,254
You may want to adjust your driving style depending on what you find out.

373
00:28:30,254 --> 00:28:31,969
I know I did.

374
00:28:31,969 --> 00:28:35,069
Thanks for watching, use your turn signals,

375
00:28:35,069 --> 00:28:36,885
and drive safely.

376
00:28:37,725 --> 00:28:40,325
♫ ham-fistedly smooth jazz ♫

377
00:28:41,836 --> 00:28:46,779
You could put it down a ways and make the
top quarter or so of the paddle’s

378
00:28:46,779 --> 00:28:47,977
pedals...

379
00:28:47,977 --> 00:28:49,694
But the accelerator pedal...

380
00:28:49,694 --> 00:28:52,422
but the accelerator pedal yeahgrgrlbgrglyagabadaHH

381
00:28:52,422 --> 00:28:57,707
The standard does not require the stop lamps
to be activated upon adivatiofehfehhfehha

382
00:28:57,707 --> 00:29:01,773
It’s not actually violating any federal
motor vehicle safety standards

383
00:29:01,773 --> 00:29:04,660
thanks to a technicality and poorly warded…

384
00:29:04,660 --> 00:29:05,992
warded?

385
00:29:06,860 --> 00:29:08,235
Welp!

386
00:29:08,235 --> 00:29:14,486
The obviously better solution of separating
those two signals into dedicated amber inder lights.

387
00:29:14,486 --> 00:29:16,384
Inderlights? OK.

388
00:29:16,384 --> 00:29:20,360
If the driver who hit you can prove your brake lights weren’t working.

389
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,028
Which, with the perliferolphh.

390
00:29:23,952 --> 00:29:25,744
That’s, why did I write “proliferation?”

391
00:29:27,171 --> 00:29:30,569
When it comes to brake lights, these Hyundai's aren't too bright.

392
00:29:30,569 --> 00:29:31,882
Get it?

393
00:29:31,882 --> 00:29:36,126
Because, like, the rear of the car is dark but also it's not smart?

394
00:29:36,126 --> 00:29:40,000
But hey, our lighting regulations are also not that bright.

395
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:44,106
In more ways than one.