Nissan Builds 48 kWh LEAF as a Side Project, Will Take It Racing

Back then, electric mobility wasn't taken too seriously by anybody, manufacturers included. A few years later, Tesla showed everyone else outside those two categories mentioned earlier that you could use an electric vehicle as a daily driver just fine, you just needed a lot of cash to buy it. But with the Model 3 in the pipeline, all that is about to change, so other manufacturers are reacting as well.

The first was GM with its Chevrolet Bolt, but Nissan will want to retain its crown of best EV seller, so expect the new LEAF to out-perform GM's offering on almost every level. And let's just hope it will also look a lot less - how should we put this gently? - hideous. Electric cars don't need to look different at any cost anymore.

Rumors say that the new LEAF, which is expected to debut soon, will have twice the battery capacity of the best current option - the 30 kWh top pick, as opposed to the 24 kWh base model. That should place it on par with the Tesla Model 3 and grant the Japanese EV a maximum range of over 200 miles (320 km).

In the meantime, though, the engineers at NTCE-S (Nissan Technical Center in Barcelona) have put together a special Nissan LEAF with a battery pack that doubles the capacity of the entry-level model. With 48 kWh, the special Nissan LEAF (nicknamed "Cocoon" after the famous sci-fi movie from the '80s) is capable of traveling 147 miles (236 km) on a single charge. We're sure that would make any current LEAF owner extremely happy.

But the Cocoon is not for sale, and probably never will be. The Spanish technicians engineered built the car to compete in the local motorsport event called ECOSeries, a competition that rewards "efficiency and fuel economy rather than outright speed." OK, we were afraid there for a moment. Well, as long as the vehicles' design doesn't have a say in deciding the winner, then we guess the LEAF has every chance of succeeding.