SeaGeo
Well-Known Member
There's a twist for this in favor of a start/stop button. A caveat is that I'll fully acknowledge it's because of a shitty implementation first. The ID.4 does the seat recognition, and also has a start/stop button (which is borderline useless). Because the way VW implemented the active state of the car based on the driver being seated, if you park and hop out of the car to go buy a quick drink and leave someone in the car, they're stuck with most creature comforts turning off. Unless the driver gets out, and then pushes the "start" button.It's a hardware vs software question to me.
The hardware for a button to be added has cost associated to it, you have all the things that make up the button (plastic, spring of some sort, movement, connection points, wire harness) that does what in return? Moves the car from a "sleep state" to "wake state"? In a ICE it makes total sense since there's not a huge battery plus you have different states in a car, ACC (wake) / Start (Run ICE) / Stop (sleep)
With an EV you already have all the needed hardware already in place, so a simple query of State can be done. The seats have a sensor already for weight which controls airbag and you already have a brake pedal. The logic is pretty simple and I believe at this point you could argue that the seat sensor is NOT needed and just go from "sleep state" to "wake state" on brake pedal pressure.
Point being, if the EV relies on a manual start/stop function rather than an automatic sensor based on weight in a seat, you don't have to jump through other software hoops to keep a car "running" when you exit the car (if you want).
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