The trick with neutral in the leaf is that you have to hold the gear selector in the neutral direction for about a second. No relation to brake pedal timing as far as I can tell. No idea why neutral has that delay given none of the other “gears” do.

Because neutral isn't a thing they expect the lowest common denominator consumer the car is designed to be usable for to be using on the daily so they gate it behind some stupid extra motions.

It's like a "lite" version of how some cars make you enter a stupid cheat code to reset your oil change reminder or some other thing that should just be in settings.