[jad03060]

My first experience with a vehicle that had 1-pedal driving as a primary function was a 2014 BMW i3. Once you got the hang of it, you could coast, cruise, accelerate, or stop without ever removing your foot from the accelerator pedal. It took me about five minutes to figure this out. Some people never did. The i3 at introduction had SIGNIFICANT regenerative braking. If you drove it like a 'normal' vehicle, you'd get whiplash, and enough people complained that they changed it during a firmware update. Personally, I was disappointed, as it degraded the number of times you could just drive without using the brake pedal. On that update, they did make some useful changes that ramped up the regenerative braking rather than being very abrupt, but the maximum amount never was the same. I will say that after driving that vehicle for most of the time, getting into my ICE, I'd have to rethink on how to drive it as the brake became required...it took a moment to adapt...like in why it is not slowing down!

This brings us to the X5 45e. This vehicle purposely does not have as much regenerative braking. It's nearly impossible to do one-pedal driving, or at least as much as you could with the i3.

There have been some articles about why most companies are moving to this mode of operation...they say it's more efficient. IMHO, for the average user, that's probably true, but if you were to learn, it's very possible to coast by feathering the accelerator rather than letting off and expecting the transmission to do it for you. The i3 was more like a manual transmission vehicle which wouldn't coast unless you shifted to neutral or pushed in the clutch, which wasn't very safe or legal everywhere. But, by feathering the pedal, you could shift between accelerating, cruising, coasting, or variable amount of regenerative braking, reaching maximum when you removed your foot from the pedal entirely.

IMHO, you can coast in any mode in the 45e, but not if you just drive it like a traditional ICE...you have to learn to feather the pedal to get what you want out of it. Watch the regenerative braking gauge while driving and the power meter to see what's happening.

What are your thoughts? I'd prefer more control over regenerative braking, but not having a big learning curve for drivers that may switch between various vehicles is probably a safety thing that may make that preferable to many, at least at first...thus, being able to modify it has an advantage to me. The i3 could give a very bad impression on a test drive as it threw you forward if you just let off on the accelerator pedal until you learned to feather it to adjust your progress. The X5 drives very much like a plain ICE, which makes it easier...not necessarily better.

[mlurker]

>>I'd prefer more control over regenerative braking

Same here, the regen braking is very light in bmw hybrids. However, I have no issues jumping between different cars (ice/hybrid/ev) and 1/2 pedal driving.

[jad03060]

Try driving an i3, or a car with high regenerative braking daily, then return to a 'normal' vehicle, and you'll likely notice!

[skyetrax]

I do like the regenerative braking on my 45e; to your point though it could be more pronounced. I wonder how much, if any, extra range is gained by using it.

[jad03060]

Extra range would be an additional bonus...I got used to rarely ever moving my foot from the accelerator on the i3 to the brake, and could easily drive it almost entirely one-pedal. Driving that daily and switching to a vehicle without it on occasion did take a stop or two to retrain myself about needing the brake pedal! If you switched regularly, you'd probably not optimize the driving on either, and I do think that BMW chose to make the 45e's driving to be closest to a typical ICE versus what a hybrid or BEV can usually do.

Much of the actual braking in the 45e is from regenerative braking, but to get more than a smidgen, you have to use the brake pedal.