Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How One-Pedal EV Driving Works in the New Kia EV 9”.
If you’ve never driven an electric car but are interested, you’ve probably heard the term one pedal driving popping up in your research. But what does that mean and how is it different from driving a combustion car and is it something you actually even want today we’re in the award-winning Kia ev9 to answer all of your questions, let’s hop behind the wheel and dig right in so all electric vehicles Use electric motors to go in the case of the ev9. Here there are two electric motors totaling 283 KW and around 516 lb feet of torque. Energy comes out of the 99.8 KW battery, which excites electromagnetics in the stator, Which pull on other magnets in the rotor, which cause the wheels to turn and make the ev9 here go from 0 to 60 and around 5 seconds in this gtline trim, simple stuff, very Fun highly recommended, however, things get interesting when you stop supplying power to that electric motor, but continue to apply some sort of mechanical torque, as in when you are coasting, but not actually stepping on the gas pedal in those situations. The magnetic fields that are turning in the motor add a resistive Force which causes the vehicle to slow down and that turns the electric motor into an electric generator and Energy starts to flow out of it. And that’s how electric cars use regenerator, braking to increase their range and improve their efficiency, recapturing energy? Every time you slow down now you’re never going to get all of the energy back that you put out.
It’S not a perpetual motion machine they’re going to be losses due to friction and other factors, but extra range is extra range and it’s one of the ways that this gtline spec gets to its 270 M EPA estimate. Now the ev9 has adjustable levels of regeneration that you access via these paddles. On the back of the steering wheel, you can go all the way down to level zero, which is no reg in when you lift off you just Co, and you can step up to level one level two and level three and finally settle on the ey pedal Max mode that we’re interested in today, uh most electric vehicles offer some sort of one pedal mode. They may be called something like e pedal or maxc, 3, gen or whatever, but generally they operate all in the same way. So when I’m in this mode, when I step on the gas pedal, I go for it like normal, but as I start to lift off of the pedal, the car starts to noticeably and dramatically slow down proportionate to how much and how quickly I lift off. Of the throttle now because there’s that linear relationship, it’s very easy to control how fast forward you go and how much you slow down with precision. And if I take my foot completely off, I can actually slow the vehicle down all the way to a complete stop.
Without ever touching the brake pedal, now most one pedal modes, don’t creep when you come to a complete stop. So when you’re at a traffic light, you could sit here without touching the brake pedal, but I prefer to do it for habit and safety now how quickly you can stop depends on a number of factors ranging from how powerful the motor or Motors in this case Are the charge state of your battery your particular vehicle’s uh software tuning the size of your wheels and more now, all EVS also have friction brakes which bring the car to a stop by grabbing metal rotors with pads, though, when you use those you take. All of that sweet, kinetic energy that you put into motion and you just waste it as heat, which isn’t the worst thing, but it doesn’t do your range any favors.
Now any EV that is worth your attention in 2024 has what’s called Blended breaking and what that means is. When you initially lift off of the accelerator, you get a little bit or maybe a lot of deceleration. But when you ease onto the brake pedal, the vehicle’s computer actually does a calculation based on how quickly you’re trying to stop and how fast you’re going, and it decides how much friction breake to give you and how much regen balancing those things out now balance braking Is never going to be as efficient as one pedal driving but friction brakes actually have better instantaneous stopping power, which is why you still need that left pedal in order to bring an EV to an emergency.
Stop now one pedal driving has its pros and cons uh in the advantage column you have at low speeds. This is probably one of the easiest ways to get the most out of your efficiency in range, because every time you come to a stop or slow down for traffic you’re going to be getting a much energy as possible back in the battery without wasting any to Friction heat now, you’re not going to be able to blow the EPA estimate out of the water, but this is probably the easiest way to get as close to that Mark as possible and sometimes maybe even go a little bit over. That’S it in situations where you’re going to be doing High, steady space speed, maybe like just doing 65 or 70 mph in a straight line for the next 30 minutes.
Having to maintain that, like precise, perfect pedal, pressure can actually be a little bit fatiguing, and I find that that with steady state speed, actually just dropping down into coasting mode is more efficient. That’S actually why a lot of the first generation German EVS, like the Audi rron, tend to emphasize freewheeling as much as possible. Also, some Studies have shown that improper use of one pedal driving can actually contribute to increased car sickness if you’re not super smooth on the pedal or if your EV software isn’t perfectly dialed in. You can end up with a lot of sort of micro adjustments to speed that can actually make your passenger start to feel a little green in the gills.
Of course, in most Vehicles one pedal driving is a toggleable mode again, very simple, just with the paddle shifters. In this car right here, so I recommend that you at least give it a try, see how it feels and if you don’t like it, just turn it off. So there you have it a quick rundown on one pedal driving how it works its advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully that gives you everything that you need to know in order to decide when to use it and when not to be sure to head over to cat.com, where we’ve got got our full review of the ev9, as well as deep dives into other electric vehicle Technologies. I think you’ll be particularly interested in our look at bidirectional charging, which the ev9 here supports. You can find that link in the description and over on cnet.com .