The Nissan Leaf Has Turned Into A Crossover

When the Nissan Leaf first arrived in 2010, the electric car landscape was very different to today. Most EVs were, frankly, abysmal little boxes that could barely go from one town to the next without needing a 10 hour charging stop, and the original bug-eyed Leaf was one of the very first to start to alter that image.

Much like an actual leaf, though, it and its much prettier successor have both sort of withered a bit as rivals have caught up and overtaken in terms of things like tech, range and charging speed. The newly revealed third-generation, then, needs to… well, turn over a new leaf.

The first thing you’ll notice is that rather than a trad hatchback, the new Leaf is now a sort of sloping-roofed crossover thing, like basically everything else these days. Still, once you’ve stopped groaning about that, you can appreciate the fact that things like the sloping roof, flush doorhandles and flat underbody contribute to a slippery drag coefficient of just 0.25.

That’s important for helping eke out as much range as possible, a number that changes depending on whether you get the Standard or Extended Range battery. Obviously. The former, a 52kWh unit, nets you an estimated maximum of 270 miles on a charge, while the bigger 75kWh battery gives an estimated 375 miles. Up to 260 miles can be regained in a quoted half an hour on a DC fast charger.

Motor details haven’t been confirmed yet beyond the fact it’ll come in a single-motor, front-drive configuration, but the new Leaf sits on a shorter version of the scalable CMF-EV platform employed by the Ariya. That means it gets multi-link rear suspension and a suite of driver assists, including an eight-point surround-view camera system.

Oh, and here’s a fun touch: those rear lights look like the Roman numerals II and III, because ‘two-three’ in Japanese is ‘ni-san’. And yes, that’s also why Nissan likes using the number 23 on its racing cars.

You won’t be surprised to learn that screenage abounds inside, with twin 14.3-inch screens handling the instrumentation and infotainment. As is industry standard these days, these will be kept fresh with over-the-air updates throughout the car’s life.

Although it’ll be a global model, the European-market Leaf is set to have very British roots. Like the outgoing car, it’ll be built at Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, and it’s also been fine-tuned for European roads at the company’s technical centre in Bedfordshire. Orders will open in autumn, with the first cars arriving on UK roads next spring.