Independent tests. Nissan e-4ORCE: goodbye to winter!

GPS doesn’t lie. Ours of its almost two meters!) famous name here and around the world, Max… Vatanen. Nissan has set up its winter quarters an hour and a half north of Helsinki in this area of ​​1,000 lakes that cars find every summer for a festival of bumps and jumps unique to the WRC calendar.

Carpets of snow and ice make the place, maybe not less scary, but less. To be honest, we are far from the repeated take-offs and landings of the Rally Finland stages, here, inside the e-4ORCE (pronounced “i force”) cars equipped with unique technology developed by the brand. A warm engine never cares to drive the wheels. It is only there to recharge the battery that powers the electric motor. We walk on a sea of ​​gentleness, a feeling enhanced in this area, with the white of the decoration and the absence, or lack, of other cars on the road.

The system reacts to the loss of wheel grip 10,000 times faster than a “normal” four-wheel drive. At the end of the day and after these long hours of driving, routes and workshops, we can only admire the quiet efficiency of the whole thing.

” Continue ! Brake! »

On your score! Ready? Fire! Our mission in this area does not require long and learned reflections. We have to speed up, just speed up, hard and until our board “coach” gives us the signal to break. The path is wide, it is clear, the risk of encountering a deer’s nose or antlers (at least in this particular area) is still very small but we wonder what image we will end up with. “Go ahead, brake!” NOW! » With the same compliance as in the previous phase we operate the relevant pedal without… brakes. The car decelerates … quickly but above all without any movement, without turbulence until it stops. With our hands on the steering wheel, we can’t applaud but appreciate the experience.

Scandinavian nights didn’t turn us into pilots. We owe this impressive recovery to the electronic devices that protect us. A few laps of the circuit, looking for “perfect” trajectories and the best peak points confirm what we had discovered, the car (this time it’s a 100% electric Ariya we went for 306 hp or 225 kW and 300 kg extra) really doesn’t. He doesn’t need us to live his life and reassure us. A trap can also come from there, due to this increasingly strong belief that pushes us to look a little further if everything is still going the same.

Demonstrations

A little later, the crossing period, the snow is clean, the grip is very small, but the Japanese embrace all the slopes, designed to illuminate it, without shaking, as calm as a family of lemmings on a weekend in the tundra. Valuable help, good and once again the feeling of knowing how to do everything behind the wheel …

The Nissan e-4orce technology relies on the vehicle’s battery to power motors distributed across each axle allowing independent control of the wheels. The performances are very impressive in the worst conditions found here, but we must see the benefits of the process every day, in the bad season, in regions where the conditions of the trap change frequently according to the weather. On wet surfaces, on leaves, ground, snow and ice of course, but also during unexpected encounters (with a puddle of oil for example) a real asset in the safety department. Winter was best behaved!