Nissan Leaf Reads People's Minds, Projects the Findings on the Road Live

It does put up a decent fight, though. The Nissan Leaf is looking at its record as the world's best-sold electric car, and then at the registrations for the Tesla Model 3, and realizes that should all those reservations go through, it would lose its crown. So while it's still preparing the new generation of the compact EV, it needs to do something to spice the existing one up a little.

The Leaf is nowhere near as exciting as the Teslas regarding performance, and it doesn't necessarily look like an electric car - and by that we mean that it doesn't seem modern, it doesn't push the design envelope at all. We've no idea how the new one is going to turn out, but given the strong competition, it'll have to be really special if it plans on putting on a decent fight. And, of course, looks are just half the battle: anything under 200 miles of maximum range will instantly disqualify the Leaf for most of the potential customers.

In an attempt to lure the young drivers, Nissan released this clip showing a bunch of driving students try their hand at an electric car for the first time. A special headgear set measures the activity of their brainwaves and translates it into an emotional state. Then, based on the readings, a pair of video projectors mounted just behind the rear windows display one of the 33 preset patterns on the asphalt. So whatever you do, try not to be scared, or everybody will know it.

As you can imagine, the reaction of most of the 30 students who functioned as guinea pigs in this experiment was "wow." Not only would have Nissan edited out anything less enthusiastic than that, but just think about the time when you first tried electric propulsion. Weren't you just as excited? Or would your splash on the pavement read "What the hell is this?"