On the Road With the 2022 Nissan Leaf's Driver Assist Tech

LAS VEGAS—The Nissan Leafage already made waves every bit one of the first all-electrical vehicles to really impact mainstream The states auto consumers. However, Nissan hasn't stopped there. For 2022, the Leafage gets an updated look, a noticeably stronger motor, a crash-land in range, and an all-new "assist" technology that uses intelligent technologies to assist yous drive rather than simply taking over.

At this year's CES, we got a take a chance to take the new Leaf for a exam drive into Las Vegas' scenic and not-at-all serpent-infested Carmine Rock Canyon.

Fifty-fifty earlier trying out the machine's new brains, we took a long look at its torso. Nissan has sold more than than 300,000 Leaf vehicles already and it shows in the auto'due south maturing design. The 2022 Foliage has sleek lines and neatly straddles the line between midsized car and sport SUV. The Leaf is still available only in front-wheel drive for 2022, though Nissan says it's working on implementing all-cycle drive in the future.

The interior is spacious with plenty of room for my vi' 2" carcass along with our guide and PCMag lensman, Zlata Ivleva, plus all our CES survival gear. A brightly lit panel is largely icon-driven, so y'all'll need to know non only which icons pertain to which office but also that office's current status based on icon colour.

The middle panel comprises a nicely vivid LCD display that interfaces with the car'southward entertainment, navigation, communication, and diagnostic systems. Our test bulldoze vehicle was fully loaded, according to our guide, with an MSRP of just over $37,000 before the $7,500 credit for purchasing a nix-emissions vehicle.

Driving Miss Herbie

Nissan's intelligent technologies in the Foliage (and likewise the Rogue product line) eddy downward to a new e-pedal and an update to the ProPilot Assist, an earlier version of which was available in the Leaf'southward 2022 iteration.

The e-pedal is a simple toggle switch near the gear selector, and you'll typically only use it during city driving. With due east-pedal on y'all can pretty much ignore the brake pedal. Simply easing off the accelerator causes e-pedal to engage in what Nissan terms "regenerative braking," which basically ways the car is using its electrical motor to do the braking rather than the brakes. This not only works, apparently it helps accuse the battery, too.

Easing off the gas starts e-pedals' slow-downwardly, while only taking your foot off the gas causes east-pedal to bring the motorcar to a full stop. That speed reduction is comfortably gradual unless the car senses an obstacle alee (like another car stopping for a traffic light), in which case it'll stop more chop-chop. It takes a certain amount of trust to let the machine to do your braking for you, but once y'all get used to the concept (which took me virtually 10 minutes in Las Vegas traffic), yous'll find yourself anticipating eastward-pedal's brake assistance such that yous'll be "feathering" your starts and stops with e-pedal in mind. I plant myself very comfortable with e-pedal in a very short amount of time and the system isn't nearly as aggressive every bit other systems I've heard almost from makers like BMW.

We engaged ProPilot Help once we hit the highway on our way to Red Stone. ProPilot automatically disables e-pedal and from there begins by acting similar to a standard cruise command. Every bit the drive, yous but select your speed of option and then take your pes off the gas once ProPilot engages. One time it's working, notwithstanding, ProPilot has two primary functions that separate it from your daddy's prowl control. First, information technology senses what's in front of it—commonly other cars. If you've got a automobile in the lane in front of you traveling more slowly than you are, ProPilot will automatically (and very gently) decrease its speed to keep the Leaf at a safe distance from the preceding vehicle. If you lot switch lanes to an empty lane, information technology'll automatically accelerate back to your originally selected speed. However, that's only one-half of ProPilot's skill set.

The other one-half is the Leaf'south camera system, which is constantly trained on the road in front end of you. The camera does its all-time work when sensing painted lane markers on the road. Even so, the road to Red Rock was covered with white, cogitating "turtles" rather than paint in near places and the Leaf did fine detecting those, too. Once the car detects a lane marking, information technology tin exercise near of the work of keeping you in the center of the lane, including steering the car through turns in the road.

The Leaf likes you to go along your hands on the wheel during this phase, though it doesn't demand the 10 and 2 o'clock position. If the automobile feels you lot've disengaged from the wheel for too long, it begins a warning procedure that starts with a red icon, continues to some increasingly insistent beeping, and if that doesn't work, the Foliage taps its brakes to wake you lot from your assumed daydream and back to keeping your attention on the road where it belongs.

In our test bulldoze, the ProPilot Assistance worked excellently. The machine lost the lane markers a few times when the paint was very erstwhile or when the turtle configurations became confusing, but for most of the trip, the Leaf could accept steered itself. Feedback for when you're drifting outside your lane was firsthand but not unduly alarming and y'all get used to the car's back talk very speedily.

Our ultimate ProPilot examination came near the terminate of our test drive when nosotros kept the speed engaged at 70mph while following some other car onto an exit ramp. The Leaf handled the whole matter with aplomb, slowing down automatically to continue us at a condom distance behind the automobile in front of us and handling the entire exit curve on its own with no assist from me. At the bottom of the turn we stopped for the low-cal, disengaged ProPilot, re-engaged eastward-pedal, and rolled off into city traffic.

Changing the Way You Drive

Volition the Foliage change the fashion you drive? Most definitely. The e-pedal characteristic alone will change how Foliage drivers interact not only with their brakes, but with their accelerators. It won't spoil you lot for other cars, but information technology'll change how you bulldoze while you're in the Leafage.

Is it a modify worth making? That'due south largely an individual question. Some folks won't see the value of the eastward-pedal, while others will wonder how they ever got along without it. The only cure hither is to make sure you lot take the Leaf for a long enough exam drive. Twenty minutes isn't going to cutting it. You lot're going to want to drive this car for at to the lowest degree 40-l minutes or more than to give yourself time to go accustomed to the drive and determine whether it'southward for y'all.

If you like the intelligent assist technologies, however, the rest of the Leaf is a no-brainer. A comfortable interior is backed upward past an electric motor with a very nice amount of accelerator "oomph" and an overall range that Nissan has increased to well over 150 miles before requiring a re-charge. That number goes up even higher as the machine intelligently conserves power during driving and even uses regenerative braking to increase battery life as well. At just over $30,000 after your tax credit, this machine is definitely worth the money and a test drive.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/19030/on-the-road-with-the-2018-nissan-leafs-driver-assist-tech

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