The manufacturer that brought us the first mainstream electric cars could also be about to become the first to bring us the next big thing in EVs: a car with double the range for less money.
When Nissan revealed its new Leaf to the world’s press back in the day, including a small group of us from the UK, we were treated to a brief drive at the Zama plant test track in a domestic-model Nissan Tiida mule, underpinned by a Leaf powertrain, and given a detailed technical briefing that included cutaway models of the battery pack. Engineers explained that they had been working on the battery technology in-house for 17 years prior to that.