So, if you can drive a Tesla, can you drive other cars? They do make some good points. Maybe they should make you take the test with stick shift.
AZDOT denies driving license for Tesla road test, citing regenerative braking and FSD. What's the future of driving tests when EVs are so popular?
www.notateslaapp.com
It does raise some interesting issues. In the OLD days, all cars were basically the same. Three gears located either on a column shifter or a floor shifter or a two or three speed automatic transmission. Turn signal on the left of the steering column. Step on the accelerator to move forward, step on the brake to stop or slow down. It didn't matter whether you were driving a Chevy, a Ford, or a Mercedes. So if you learned to drive on one car, and took the driving test on that car, it would translate to almost every car.
A number of years ago I was on a business trip to San Diego. I got to the airport and the rental car company and got my PT Cruiser rental. I proceeded to drive to the exit window and went to lower the power window to present my credentials to the clerk when I couldn't find the window control, Unlike all other cars at the time, Chrysler had put the power window controls on the dash near the radio instead of on the door. Did it make sense to change a commonly understood position? I don't think so.
Then it got worse. I own a Genesis GV60P and have had an electrified G80 and a GV80 as loaners. I can't remember which one but one one of the cars, maybe mine, Genesis had moved the controls that were on the right side of the steering
wheel to the left side and the reverse. Why? I could care less which side they were on but don't change them! Let us have some muscle memory.
I don't envy ADOT in trying to figure out the current testing. When I was young and got my first driving license back East, the key part of the driving test was parallel parking; it was a difficult skill for a new driver but it was a necessary skill, at least in eastern cities. I have lived in greater Phoenix for more than 35 years and I think I have had to parallel park here five times in those 35 years. But I did one trip back east and had to parallel park immediately.
I do wish that the tests would also focus on lane usage. It seems that these days everyone here turns into a three lane road into the left lane in order to proceed slowly. Europeans don't believe in capital punishment but this would come close to that there. It isn't brain surgery: keep moving to the right until you are all the way over or proceeding at the pace of traffic. Oh well...rant over.
One more interesting, to me, differentiator. Teslas, and Lucids among others, don't have blended braking systems. When one steps on the brake pedal, it immediately invokes the friction brake. So one pedal driving makes a lot of sense. But on the Genesis, at least on the GV60, the brake is a blended braking system: initially stepping on the brake invokes regeneration; stepping harder or quickly invokes the friction brake. So one can gain much of the benefit of one pedal driving while using the accelerator and brake pedal in the traditional manner.
