EV One-Pedal Driving Explained in the Kia EV9 – Video

Speaker 1: 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 EV nine to answer all of your questions, the top behind the wheel and dig right in. So all electric vehicles use electric motors to go. In the case of the EV nine here, there are two electric motors totaling 283 kilowatts, [00:00:30] and around 516 pound feet of torque energy comes out of the 99.8 kilowatt hour battery, which excites electromagnetics in the stator, which pull on other magnets in the rotor, which cause the wheels to turn and make the EV nine here go from zero to 60 and around five seconds in this GT line trim.

Speaker 1: Simple stuff, very fun, highly recommended. However, things get interesting when you stop supplying power to that electric motor, but continue to [00:01:00] 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 at 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 regenerative braking to increase their range and improve their efficiency. Recapturing energy. Every time you slow [00:01:30] down now you’re never going to get all of the energy back that you put out. It’s not a perpetual motion machine. There are 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 GT line spec gets to its 270 mile EPA estimate.

Speaker 1: Now, the EV nine 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 region when you lift off, you just coast [00:02:00] and you can step up to level one, level two and level three and finally settle on the I pedal max mode that we’re interested in today. Most electric vehicles offer some sort of one pedal mode. They may be called something like EED or Max Region 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 forward like normal, but as I start to lift off of the pedal, the car starts to noticeably and dramatically slow down proportionate [00:02:30] to how much and how quickly I lift off of the throttle.

Speaker 1: 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 safety. [00:03:00] 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 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 [00:03:30] doesn’t do your range any favors.

Speaker 1: Now, any EV that is worth your attention in 2024 has what’s called blended braking. 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 brake to give you and how much region balancing those things out. [00:04:00] 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 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 and range because every time you come to a stop or slow down for traffic, you’re going to be getting as much [00:04:30] energy as possible back in the battery without wasting any to friction heat.

Speaker 1: 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 just doing 65 or 70 miles per hour in a straight line for the next 30 minutes, having to maintain that precise perfect pedal pressure can actually be a little bit fatiguing. And I find that [00:05:00] with steady state speed, actually just dropping down into coasting mode is more efficient. That’s actually why a lot of the first generation Germany EVs, like the Audi e-tron, 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 [00:05:30] 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 toggle 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

Speaker 2: And not to be sure to head over to cnet.com where we’ve got our full [00:06:00] review of the EV nine as well as deep dives into other electric vehicle technologies. I think you’ll be particularly interested in our look at bi-directional charging, which the EV nine here supports. You can find that link in the description and over on cnet.com.