Interesting question about the Torque bar

I got an interesting question about the blue “Aim bar” in the new driving screen. Confusion arose how, when increasing speed, the maximum braking torque aim bar actually shrinks, while common sense would dictate it should stay the same or even grow a bit.

Well, common sense is not always right! Assume we are running at a speed where the motor itself can apply it’s maximum braking torque. The power this potential braking would generate is the torque multiplied by the angular velocity. So, as the speed of the vehicle goes up, by definition, the power regenerated with this maximum torque goes up too. Pretty quickly we will hit the limit of the battery: 43kW, and that is under ideal circumstances. At any speed above that, you’d have to actually decrease torque not to go over this maximum, and this is exactly what the power management does and what is displayed through the blue bar..

Consequently, if you “follow” the bar coming down from i.e. 120 km/h, you will find you’ll easily hit that maximum with only a little bit of braking pressure. While speed bleeds off you’ll find yourself braking harder and harder following the blue bar, chasing the maximum power. That goes on until you reach the maximum torque the motor itself can apply. For a short moment, this is a fixed value. As the car decelerates further, now at a constant rate, at constant pedal pressure and with decreasing power generation, it reaches the point where the motor is simply turning too slowly to apply its maximum generating torque and the ability to brake through the motor collapses. I you don’t do anything, the friction brakes will kick in. This is the “traffic light effect”.

Hope this helps.