How did you pick a driving mode?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

PrairieLEAF

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 10, 2019
Messages
200
Location
Weld County, Colorado
Being my first experience with driving modes (unless manual transmission gears count), it took me some time and experimentation to settle on one.

In the beginning, I was having just a bit o' fun in regular-D, grinning like the piece of work that I am. The rate the charge percentage would drop was unsettling me, and I imagined I wasn't doing much for the treadlife of the front tires.

After the thrill wore off a bit, I remembered I usually prefer a more relaxed driving experience, and found myself using B-eco. I had some worries about surprising those behind me with the lack of brake lights, and the pedal feel while accelerating seemed geriatric, at times.

I've since gotten comfortable with the acceleration feel of eco, and find that regular-D seems a bit unhinged. I really like the D-eco rate of regen as well, and it's become my everyday mode of choice.

For thrills now, I use the runaway feeling from being close to 100% charge or in temperatures too cold for regen...whoa, pony!

How did you pick your go-to mode?
 
I've stuck with Normal. No ECO, no B, no e-pedal.

I actually like e-pedal but since my wife and I share the car, I didn't want her to get into trouble going back and forth from a regular car to e-pedal and get confused.

I played around with ECO mode when I first got it and discovered I didn't get much if any improved efficiency. I'm not a lead foot anyway, so it simply made me push harder when I really DID need some quick power. I like the more responsive feel without it engaged, and honestly, I'm not sure how big an efficiency gain there is in getting up to the same speed slower. Your power to accelerate is lower, but over a longer time. Maybe you get a boost on the AC or Heat efficiency though? I never noticed.

I would use B if I had a big hill to go down, but the mountains near me are too much for my current leaf. Not enough range to go up into them. I use my other vehicles for that, though I'm hoping my next EV will.
 
For basically the same reasons of you, ECO no B.
Dislike regular D(too jumpy IMO) and B gives me a bit too much regen(which everyone says is less efficient than coasting and I agree). Like the previous poster, I do use B getting off the freeway or coasting down a long hill if I start to get too much speed, also while I don't use CC I seem to remember B disables it or you can't set CC while B is on??
 
I initially tested all modes during my commute to work, which is mostly highway miles, and around town to see which worked best for me and gave me the best mileage. I ended up choosing e-pedal and have been enjoying it. I also like that there is less wear on the brakes when properly driving with e-pedal.

D mode gave me great response, but not good mileage. My wife likes D mode and hates e-pedal, but she rarely drives my car, so not using it was an easy decision.

B mode was a slight step above D mode, but I found it annoying that I had to turn it ON all of the time; an Auto-ON, like that for the e-pedal, for B mode would have been a good feature to have.

Eco mode did not give me much extra mileage on the highway, and was only useful on the streets. I also did not like the accelerating response from Eco mode. However, I like how Eco mode saved my butt a few times during my first few months with the car, when my battery charge was very low and I had to make it home. I very rarely use it nowadays, only using it when my battery charge is low.
 
Highway: D + Eco no Propilot unless eating/drinking trying to keep flat power output.

City: B + Eco Rolling to lights when not interrupting traffic. Hard regen when required to come to a stop. Slow accelerate cycle if possible.

Ideally I want to be between 4.5-5 miles kWh on the highway and 5.5-6 in the city.
 
I'm coming to the Leaf from a Prius, so most of my driving habits are the same.

Standard driving: Eco mode. The Prius just used Eco to adjust the accelerator sensitivity, decreased maximum total power output to about 80%, and decreased the maximum power draw for the air conditioning. The Leaf seems similar, but also makes regenerative braking more aggressive... which is the one difference that I dislike. I'm getting used to keeping light pressure on the accelerator for things like trying to just coast or roll down hills, but I wish that I could just roll off the accelerator and control braking with the brake pedal, instead.

Stop-and-go traffic: e-Pedal. The Prius doesn't have an equivalent. I think of this as "cruise control for traffic." Think about it: if you've done long drives on the highway, particularly those ones totaling hundreds of miles, cruise control is a wonderful feature that means you don't have to keep varying your foot on the accelerator. Because the car is handling the varying of the accelerator, most of the time you just keep your foot resting on the ground. Similarly with e-Pedal, in stop-and-go traffic there's a bit of tapping a pedal here and there, but otherwise you just have your foot on the ground while the car keeps holding the brakes.

In this way I actually think Nissan was pretty brilliant to have e-Pedal as a switch, rather than a harder to access main setting. I've read that many EV drivers either use one-pedal driving full-time or don't use it at all, and there was some criticism when Nissan made e-Pedal a switch placed in such a prominent place that could have gone to something else. Maybe I'll feel differently if I ever buy an electric vehicle that forces me to choose one or the other (particularly Tesla, which - unlike Toyota's hybrids, Chevrolet's Bolt, or the Leaf - has zero regenerative braking associated with the brake pedal), but I like the capability to switch the behavior on the fly. I don't think I'd like one-pedal driving for everything, and I'd also be afraid that if I got used to it then I'd be unsafe if I went back to a car without that capability.

I only used B-mode on my Prius when going down long over extremely steep hills, particularly when the battery was already full. On the Prius it uses the internal combustion engine to apply stopping force, which does nothing for regenerative braking. For the Leaf it sounds like it just makes the regenerative braking even more aggressive. I could see myself using it on extremely long downhills, but otherwise the regenerative braking on "eco" already seems aggressive enough and I'm not opposed to using the brake pedal, so I'm not sure when I'd actually use this.

Standard mode... it's too easy to have fun with the acceleration potential and burn down your battery's charge. I'll probably save this for those times when I need to use a short on-ramp into fast-moving traffic.
 
B mode is useful for city and low speed secondary road driving that involves lots of slowing down, but not that much actual stopping. I leave my Leaf in Eco normally, and find that it is enough for all but the steepest downhills. I use ePedal occasionally in stop and go traffic, but don't use it much overall.
 
Around town, which is never really stop and go traffic jams, but more inter-suburban driving on secondary roads, I prefer B mode, no eco. I like the responsiveness of the normal pedal mapping. And the extra regen feels like a stick-shift car in a lower gear. Which is awesome.

On the highway, in order to preserve energy when we coast more, we drive in D, again no eco. Haven't done enough of that to really use Pro Pilot.

In the winter, I'm expecting to use eco mode when traction is lower, and to conserve energy while running the heater. Prolly B + eco in those months. We'll see here in a few weeks, actually.

I know that for some folks here, range is like hp for muscle car gearheads, lol. But we're not that way. I love that the Leaf is a powerful little go getter. So I drive it pretty much the way I would drive any car - with a little gusto and love of life, but not irresponsibly.

We get around 4.1 mi/kWh in warm weather. I'm not unhappy with that. I'll tone things down a bit when we get to winter driving on snows, again, as I would with any car. Expect to charge once a week instead of 2-3x a month. Interested to see how much our energy use changes in the next few months.
 
frontrangeleaf said:
Around town, which is never really stop and go traffic jams, but more inter-suburban driving on secondary roads, I prefer B mode, no eco. I like the responsiveness of the normal pedal mapping. And the extra regen feels like a stick-shift car in a lower gear. Which is awesome.

That's a combination I haven't tried much, if at all. I'll have to give it a shot!
 
I much prefer the throttle-mapping in Eco mode; it gives finer control at slower speeds, where it's needed. If I want more acceleration I simply move my foot as needed. I don't get why people equate this to "reduced performance". All torque from 0-100% is still available, it's just mapped more linearly vs the heavy "tip-in" mapping of regular mode. The ONLY reason I select "regular is to avoid the HVAC nerfing. It's rare that I need to do this.

I generally select B mode because it's more convenient -- gives more speed control without having to switch pedals. Reducing regen for efficiency sake can be accomplished by modulating the pedal -- again, Eco makes this easier. About the only time for D is if I am going to be using cruise control, to keep the computer from wasting momentum unnecessarily.
 
100% ECO mode since about 2 days after I bought the car as it seems more intuitive to me and easier to control. The weather isn't extreme where I live so no need for the extra power for the HVAC. I use B mode when decelerating if the normal mode doesn't peg the regen bars soon enough and sometimes in stop/go traffic, which fortunately is a rare event for me. I coast a bunch on some roads as a lot of my driving covers the same few routes and there some hills where I can coast for a mile at a constant 35 mph which is the speed limit there. Occasionally I get going too fast and I drop into D mode for a few seconds to reduce my speed. Then when I approach a red light it's D mode until a low speed and then B mode until I hit the brakes.
 
I too use Eco almost all of the time. D mode is my "ludicrous mode." I do use B mode in city driving with no traffic, and occasionally use ePedal if there is stop and go traffic.
 
Regen levels top to bottom;
E Pedal
B
D

Eco only moderates pedal response. If you are computer friendly, its basically the same as setting acceleration on your mouse.

Definitions aside; I find that a single driving mode is not possible for me. Too many variances in the driving conditions I see for that. Each mode is like a tool so its all about learning how to use the tool and recognizing the correct conditions that tool should be used in.

Now we all have preferences so mine is hardly "the right way", It is simply "my way."

I never use D and Eco is always on so that leaves me E Pedal (eco does not affect) Eco B and N

Now when driving for efficiency, your goal is not constant speed, its constant power. Regen is better than braking but still should be avoided as much as possible. This is obviously a monumental goal that won't be achieved most of the time but its still a well understood goal.

Now in the 40, B mode regens better than previous packs. This makes sense since larger packs can take larger current. E Pedal regens 50% higher than B mode. D mode was not tested since it simply is a tool I am not all that interested in using.

So my primary mode of driving is Eco B. I do toggle E Pedal on for those quicker decelerations that pop up. Since its better to be safe that daring, sometimes I toggle it off a few seconds later realizing it more deceleration than I will need but at least it notifies people behind me that something is potentially happening. Using E Pedal in stop and go traffic is also a no brainer.

N I use at random times when I can see a light in the distance that is red with several cars waiting. Most of the lights are on 50 mph highways so have long durations so the idea is to hit the light about a minute after its turned green. This frequently means I will go no slower than 30-35 mph and sometimes even better. This is pure laziness on my part. I found that a slow deceleration using no "visible" regen is most definitely possible but not that easy to do if talking about a quarter mile stretch.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I shift a lot...

So is it working?

First off, in my 40 kwh, I drive faster simply because I can. All my trips South (speed limit 70) were always done at 62 (24 kwh) or 65 (30 kwh) but now its 70-75 and I am seeing .26 mile per kwh improvement in overall performance. There are other factors involved. The car is reputedly more efficient so a boost was expected
 
E-pedal all the time. At 87 years of age, my reflexes aren't as fast as when I was younger. B mode is used the few times I come down from the foothills into town. My wife uses D mode and I don't encourage her to switch because she also drives our Honda Odyssey. We have never tried other driving modes and are not concerned with economy.
 
Back
Top