The Eco-Pedal: Nissan’s Backseat Driver
There are a lot of great new technologies appearing these days to improve fuel efficiency, such as Eco-boost engines, cylinder shut-down technology, and electric motors… but then we also have some questionable technology out there…
Such as vehicles with solar panels and front bumper wind generators, that are just barely able to gather up enough energy to light up a cigarette. Then there is hydrogen vehicles that would literally bankrupt any nation to oblivion with their trillion dollar hydrogen infrastructure… and now we introduce to you another questionable idea, the Eco-pedal by Nissan.
The ECO Pedal as it has been dubbed is a new effort put forth by Nissan to battle poor fuel economy. How it works, is as the vehicle is in motion, the computer module calculates the exact gas ratio that would offer the best fuel economy at any particular moment in driving and then it attempts to nudge/adjust the pedal for you, while your foot is on it.
Okay, so let’s get this straight. Let’s say you are entering a busy highway intersection and you press the accelerator to safely fit into traffic. Are we going to be fighting the Nissan backseat driver telling us the slow down the whole time?
Yes we are… unless you turn the darn thing off. Which thankfully it does have an on/off switch.
This, what would seem at first glance, irritating, little technological gadget is said by Nissan to probably offer somewhere in the range of a 5 to 10 percent gas savings over time by teaching better driving habits. In other words, it will pull some of that lead out of our toes by nagging us to death when we are driving too fast or aggressive.
We can already hear some of the conversations that will be going on between the consumer and the Nissan backseat driver:
“Oh, no you don’t…”
“What, I’m hardly even going the speed limit here”
“If you do that one more time!”
“Okay, that does it, your off”
They might as well have pre-programed mother-in-law voices to tell us when we are driving over the speed limit too. We could be looking at a whole new type of internal road rage this coming 2009 when the Eco-pedal is finally released… joy!
August 7th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
[…] Original post by Auto Trends […]