You're not wrong, but also there is value in a tool that will behave the same way consistently and has been vetted. I wouldn't be so down on this work.
It is a bit of a catch-22, a plain english wrapper opens up the tool to be more widely used by novices, but also prevents those novices from actually learning the tool.
Nothing, but after becoming reliant on an LLM they may simply become overwhelmed and give up once they outgrow it's capabilities. I've seen this happen to several people I know.
The current flow is intentionally minimal, but it does front-load the account wall more than it should. A better approach is letting people explore at least one system or environment before asking for an email, so they can decide whether it’s worth engaging further.
I’m treating this as an experiment in how people prefer to encounter complex systems, and this is useful signal. I’ll adjust the entry point so the value is clearer before any signup.
Yes it's fun. One small note, for the outside temp you can use 3K, the cosmic microwave background radiation temperature. Not that it would meaningfully change your conclusion.
With the ICE car, if you want to go 55, you might accelerate to 57 and then coast down to 55 without using brakes.
With an EV you might accelerate to 57 and then brake to 55 when you let off the accelerator.
Tire wear is a function of how often you use your tires to slow down the car. With an ICE car that's every time you hit your brakes. With an EV that's both brakes and regen. An EV's time spent braking or regenning is more than the time an ICE car spends braking.
Someone could design an EV that behaves the way you describe, but aggressive regen sells better, so no one does.
> With an EV you might accelerate to 57 and then brake to 55 when you let off the accelerator.
No one with more than a few miles of one-pedal driving would do this; it’d be highly unpleasant.
What actually happens is you remap your pedal inputs: all the way off is braking, somewhere in the middle is coasting. Your brain will do it automatically and OPD is far more pleasant than two-pedal driving after a trivial learning curve.
I agree that OPD is better. I disagree that it's easy to coast with OPD.
What actually happens is you wind up decelerating for curves, accelerating on straights more, and otherwise having better control of the car. Holding the pedal in a location where power is neither going to or coming from the motor is very difficult; usually you want power going to the motor anyway to overcome air resistance.
Also, consider that most EVs will automatically regeneratively brake when going downhill with cruise control on. The last ICE car I owned just coasted and would speed up on large downhills with cruise on.
Of the three EVs, all different manufacturers, that we've owned in the last decade, zero have coasting as an easy option. You have to either switch off OPD entirely, or else literally shift the car into neutral.
And yes, you are right, if you do that you can coast and then your tire wear will be no worse than an ICE vehicle.
Yeah, you're not shifting into neutral on your ICE car to coast from 57 to 55 either, you're just releasing the accelerator. You've still got the motor engaged, so you're doing mild engine braking on the ICE even if it's vernacularly called coasting.
If you lack the middle-school-level understanding of physics to understand why, I'm not going to be able to give it to you in an internet comment.
Think hard about why braking and coasting would wear the tires differently. Here's a hint. Where does the energy go? What is doing the work to stop the car in each scenario?
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