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2018 Nissan LEAF Revealed with Underwhelming Specs and Tame Exterior Design

The first-gen Nissan LEAF is still the world's best-selling electric car, a title it will undoubtedly lose over the course of the next months, and that is very unlikely as well to be reclaimed by its successor.
2018 Nissan LEAF 42 photos
Photo: Nissan
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Why the pessimism? For once, it has nothing to do with the hatchback's exterior design. The 2018 LEAF is no work of art, but at least it doesn't look it was drawn by a five-year-old with a fetish for frogs anymore. It has the appearance of a normal car with a bit of a striking similarity with the Chevrolet Bolt near its rear end.

It definitely won't make a lot of people fall in love with it on looks, so it needs to bring something else to the table. The holy grail of battery-powered vehicles seems to be the maximum range they offer on a single charge, and the new LEAF appears like it missed the boat here as well.

The specs released by the Japanese manufacturer say that Nissan's new EV is capable of driving for 400 kilometers (248 miles) before having to call for a tow truck, but that's based on the local JC08 standard, which is as accurate as the European one. In reality (and according to EPA), the new LEAF will get about 150 miles from its 40 kWh battery pack.

Fret not, much like the Tesla Model 3, a long-range version will be released later on (sometime next year, maybe at the same time as its U.S. sales debut) and it should go over the 200 miles benchmark. However, it will also cost more considering it'll have a 60 kWh pack, but how much more nobody knows.

The price for the base model is expected to remain roughly the same, but since LEAFs have been on heavy discounts for the past years, nobody really remembers what that is. Think just under $30,000, making it a very interesting proposition for a second, commuting car after applying the government incentives.

In exchange for that money, though, you get a lot of interior room and some impressive technology. You also get a classic, dull, unimaginative interior design with switches you would get in a Navara pickup truck as well. Its redeeming features is what appears to be a digital instrument cluster, which more than makes up for the underwhelming central display.

About that technology we mentioned earlier, it essentially boils down to two things: the ProPILOT Assist driver's aid suite and the e-Pedal. The former is Nissan's approach to preliminary self-driving tech and it will help take some stress off the driver, particularly on those long highway journeys they won't make because of the short range. The latter makes driving using just one pedal a reality and despite Nissan's claims of being "revolutionary," almost all EVs have it.

But probably the worst part about the new LEAF is its charging options. The released specs talk about 3 kW and 6 kW regular charging rates, which take 16 and 8 hours respectively, while "quick charging" fills up the battery to 80 percent in 40 minutes. Had Nissan enabled the LEAF to take advantage of the planned 350 kW chargers, having a small battery pack would have become an advantage since charging would have taken less than filling up a gasoline tank.

With just a few days from the start of the Frankfurt Motor Show, Nissan introduced the new LEAF during an event in Tokyo, which is one way of stating which market is more important to the manufacturer. However, the EV will be present in Germany as well where we're sure will attract a lot of curious EV enthusiasts.

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Editor's note: Elon Musk's presentations might be bad, but they're not nearly as bad as Nissan's video.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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