Nissan’s Leaf city car is a great, affordable alternative to the Tesla Motors Model S and other high-end electric cars. It doesn’t have a huge range in its current iteration, though, but that’s about to change — there’s a range-boosting update on the way, and the next Leaf could have over five hundred kilometres of all-electric power.
You’ll get up to 170km of driving distance from the current Leaf, which is, all things considered, pretty damn good. That’s not enough for an extra-city journey, though, and you’d be hard pressed even to take a day trip to the Central Coast and get back to Sydney without sweating bullets about battery charge. An imminent model update should boost that range to around 200km, if not more.
It’s the next iteration, though, that’s more impressive. The next-gen Leaf was teased to shareholders and potential customers at Nissan’s 2015 Ordinary Shareholder Meeting, and it’s a quantum leap in performance — over 300 miles from a single full battery charge, which translates to over 550km, through improvements in battery tech, increases in aerodynamics, and a lighter overall weight.
The new Leaf should be strong competition for Chevy (Holden)’s 250-mile-plus Bolt, as well as the slightly more luxe Tesla Model 3. We’ll update you as we learn more about the next Leaf update from Nissan, as well as the moon-shot 550km-plus model.
Here’s that teaser video: