If you’ve ever taught someone to drive a car, you know that feeling of an unpleasantly abrupt stop; to a novice, the brake pedal is basically an on/off switch.
When my dad taught me to drive back in the ’80s, he stressed: As you press the brake and the car starts to slow, there’s going to be a moment at the very end when the wheels stop completely and the car lurches to a halt, causing the passengers to tilt forward, then backward. This was unacceptable. So to avoid this, “Jusssst before that lurch, release the brake pedal,” he said.
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“But won’t the car keep rolling forward, then?”
“No,” he said. “All of the momentum is already out of the car. Try it.”
I did, it works, and that’s how I’ve driven ever since.
Nissan is getting rid of that lurch without the intervention of an easily-disappointed parent. Their e-4ORCE all-wheel control system, which they’re already using in the Ariya, prevents that forward-back body roll when the brake is depressed:
To illustrate its efficacy, they came up with this somewhat silly but ultimately convincing demonstration: A small platform with scaled-down electric motors running on the e-4ORCE software whips down a counter with a bowl of ramen perched on top. It stops on a dime, but doesn’t spill a drop of the broth:
Source: core77