Yes. By law brakes must come on when the regen deceleration rate meets a certain threshold. L in the Gen 1 cars did not meet this threshold, so no brake lights. Gen 2 and the Bolt can regen more aggressively, hence the brake lights come on as needed.
I wonder why there isn't a category 4 where fast panic deceleration causes the brake lights to flash like a strobe light. I've seen accidents on the freeway where cars are approaching stopped traffic where such an attention grabber would have prevented some rear endings.
EU has that as an optional standard since 2010. Apparently, the US isn't exactly leading the curve here.
Or she's a competent driver who maintains a sane following distance.
See this thread for a test you can do yourself.
It comes on when deceleration hits a certain point; the paddle has a "fade-in" effect so it doesn't come on right away unless you're on a steep hill. When I start braking to turn into my neighborhood at night, it takes about 1 second from pressing the paddle before I see the brake lights light up the signs behind me.
Actually, my BMW 135i has this. A panic stop will turn on additional, higher-intensity lights inboard of the normal brake lights.
I think you missed the sarcasm.
Heh. You'll find that's the kind of thing said WAY TOO OFTEN in cold seriousness. There's a lot of "OMG, don't use low, don't do this, don't do that or you'll get killed being rear-ended on the freeway" that gets said, often involving brake lights but sometimes cruise control or many other things. The fact that rolling rear-end collisions are a vanishingly tiny portion of highway collisions doesn't seem to be a Known Thing, nor that most of the rear-ended vehicles on highways are cop cars or fire trucks with ALL THE LIGHTS ON (which suggests that whether your brake lights are on or not really isn't gonna change anything...)
