• perestroika@slrpnk.net
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    4 days ago

    Interesting, but feels like abuse of the patent system (which is widespread) and feels pointless.

    Personal experience: I drive the earliest highway-capable electric car, a MIEV from 2011. It has a “manual gear stick”. Gear B gives hard acceleration and hard regenerative braking. D gives medium. C gives slow acceleration and soft regenerative braking. In reality, there’s only one mechanical gear - the parking lock. All other “gears” including reverse are electronically implemented. As for why the letters are out of sequence, I don’t know.

    I use B in summer and D in winter, because applying B on glass-flat ice can lead to skidding. I hear that people in mountainous places appreciate B when going downhill - constant deceleration with no touching of the brake pedal.

    But something that’s been rinsed and repeated over the history shouldn’t be patentable any more.