Nissan’s next-generation LEAF, the company’s premier fully electric vehicle, will feature a rather unique way to be driven. It’s called the e-Pedal, and it’s at once confusing and somehow also quite intuitive in concept. What it does, as the automaker says, is reduce the Leaf’s operation to a single-pedal mode.
There’s still a steering wheel that’s reassuringly circular and that will alter the angle of the two front wheels in correspondence to its rotation. There’s also a pair of foot pedals, as you’d expect. One to accrue speed and the other to apply frictional resistance, resulting in deceleration. It can be used to accelerate, decelerate, and stop the car entirely, even coming to a complete stop on hills, staying put, and resuming forward motion when the pedal is depressed again.
Not in the case of the e-Pedal mode, though, which can be engaged/disengaged via a flip-switch just north of the gear lever, as it relies on input solely from the gas pedal to control forward movement and lack thereof. Depress the pedal, and the car will begin to accelerate, just like you’d expect.
The difference comes from what happens after you release the pedal, which will immediately slow the car down by invoking its regenerative braking system. Exactly how intuitive it is to use in the real world depends very heavily on how well Nissan is able to calibrate it, but the automaker confident that its ease will cause most drivers (once adapted) to cover 90 percent of their driving needs with the e-Pedal enabled.
“In heavy traffic and during city commutes, drivers will greatly reduce the need to shift from one pedal to the other, making your drive simpler and more engaging. The e-Pedal technology represents another key milestone in Nissan’s ongoing commitment to bring accessible, advanced driver assistance technologies to the mainstream. Set to make driving safer and more enjoyable, the development of these technologies is part of Nissan Intelligent Mobility, the company’s blueprint for transforming how cars are driven, powered and integrated into society.”
On paper, this unique feature to the upcoming Nissan LEAF does sounds like it could actually catch on. In urban driving, the slow and often stop-go pace of traffic makes this kind of ‘pedal paradigm’ kind of a no-brainer. But we’re still a little skeptical about how natural it will feel in the real world and how quickly it will take to grow accustomed to, especially after a lifetime of being inundated with idea of having a pedal separately dedicated to going and stopping.
We’ll have to wait until the full unveil of the all-new LEAF that’s slated for September 6th to have a more complete idea (likely even live demonstration) of this new e-Pedal. Looking at this video, it’s safe to say that we now know how the car will end up looking like in profile. To us: we reckon it’ll resemble a Ford Focus from the side.
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