E-pedal Safety in rainy weather

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Hitchcock1954

New member
Joined
Dec 15, 2022
Messages
1
I had an issue with e-pedal braking during moderate rain on a highway curve in heavy traffic. I was in the far-left HOV lane in a line of cars and the one in front of me touched the brakes. I took my foot completely off the accelerator, which engaged my brakes, and the car started to skid toward the next lane to the right. Fortunately, it was not an emergency kind of braking situation and there was no one directly beside me. I carefully touched the accelerator and the skid stopped, and traffic continued safely.
I resolved not to use e-pedal in bad weather.
Anyone else have a similar issue?
RW, Tempe
 
I use ePedal all the time in snow and ice. The car's stability management system handles it just fine in the urban cycle, however I would never back off the throttle suddenly at highway speeds in slippery conditions using epedal as that is asking for trouble. You want to modulate both speed and driving separation so that a sudden deceleration is not needed, or just use regular drive mode.

Loading up the front wheels in a FWD (as you do when regen braking) is something that would normally result in a lot of accidents were it not for the stability management system combined with ABS. There is a lot going in under the hood for example when using ePedal and decelerating down an icy/snowy hill with respect to the brake system adding in rear brake along with regen, or turning off regen altogether and resorting to the stability management system to slow the car. As speed increases though, these systems cannot defeat the laws of physics, so you really want to minimise steering and braking inputs at speed by slowing down and increasing following distance.

I auto crossed competitively for about 10 years, and quite frankly was surprised at how well the LEAF manages snow/ice. I do use studded winters, which certainly helps. There is a thread here about a LEAF being auto crossed and requiring no less than 3 fuses pulled to defeat all of the electronic nannies (which you do not want in play) when racing.
 
You just have to be smart about it and use it somewhat responsibly. Take some time driving with ePedal in good dry conditions first so that you get used to managing the pedal in a smooth manner. Just yanking your foot off the gas with ePedal on is like immediately going from the gas to jumping on the brake in a regular car, in slippery conditions even with good ABS and stability control, this still has the potential to cause issues, if even just from the sudden weight shift throwing off the balance of the car.

denwood said:
I auto crossed competitively for about 10 years, and quite frankly was surprised at how well the LEAF manages snow/ice. I do use studded winters, which certainly helps. There is a thread here about a LEAF being auto crossed and requiring no less than 3 fuses pulled to defeat all of the electronic nannies (which you do not want in play) when racing.

I also occasionally autox my Leaf when they do hold local events (though they haven't been very active lately), maybe it's different on gen2 but on my gen1 I only have to pull one fuse for the ABS and ESP to disable. I've considered putting in a momentary switch to activate a relay that interrupts power either to that fuse or the steering angle sensor, just to make it easier and quicker to do on demand.

The Leaf is also a surprisingly capable car on the tarmac, despite the open diff and rear torsion beam suspension, it is quite an underrated chassis IMO.
 
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