Every carmaker has an electric car “planned”, but most of these concepts are what they are – concepts – and few actually “walk the talk”. However, some of them mean business. Mitsubishi is a pioneer in putting EVs on the road with the i-MiEV, which will also sell in Europe with Peugeot and Citroen badges.
Renault-Nissan is also betting big time on an electric future – the Alliance aims to be the world leader in electric vehicles and will roll out 500,000 units per year across the globe from 2012. Designed to be affordable and mass market, Renault’s Z.E family of EVs and Nissan’s Leaf are on track to “electrify” the industry.
Nissan has announced that its Leaf will be made in Sunderland, UK, joining two other manufacturing hubs for the EV. Production will begin in Oppama, Japan later this year followed by Smyrna, Tennessee, USA in 2012. Sunderland will come on-line in early 2013 with an initial annual production capacity of about 50,000 units. Also, construction of Nissan’s advanced lithium-ion battery plant will begin next month. The facility, which will be located at Sunderland, will have a production capacity of 60,000 units per year. It will start supplying battery packs to Renault and Nissan come 2012.
To go on sale later this year, the Leaf is a zero-emissions EV powered by an 80kW electric motor. It has a real world range of 160 km and charges to 80% capacity in under 30 minutes. Top speed is “more than 140 km/h”, so this is not a city-only vehicle. Billed as the “world’s first affordable, mass produced zero emission car”, the Leaf is a five-seater C-segment hatchback sitting on an all-new dedicated EV platform. Will it come to Malaysia in the future? Possible, since the official pictures show a right-hand drive car, but it’s not easy for car companies to plan ahead when our country doesn’t have a clear roadmap on green cars and technology.
Click here for videos and images of the Nissan Leaf.
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Creative engineering approach!…. Hope this car won't hit "recall" in future comings.
The rear design reminds me the "Mitsubishi i" design…
i hope this Nissan Leaf is not using leaf springs all round!!
How much is affordable?
RM170k?
secondly, brilliant car… cant wait to turn-over-a-new-leaf ;-)
when start sellin in m'sia & how much?
ugly front looking…
strange .. the "1st !! im a lamer" gang seem to be missing from this thread. Anyway, back to topic, i hope all other car manufacturer will jump into the electric car bandwagon.
this is the future! but i don't think recharging batteries at home or at a station is the answer to mass acceptability of EVs. i think the idea of swapping battery packs is more practical. plus, a battery pack station can probably get better discounts and tariffs for electricity usage than a home user.
someone needs to push for a standard battery design.
Imagine when electric cars start becoming more commonplace in the future, you won't be talking about how many litres a car's engine has or how much horsepower it produces. Instead, you'll be referring to how many kW the motor produces, how fast it charges up etc. This is the future…
buntot macam myvi …huhu..xmenarik la plak
Ecoinoems are in dire straits, but I can count on this!
Been watching over this very closely.. but one limitation that they have at the moment is the battery life span is only 5 years. Please refer to the Nissan Leaf USA microsite.
Enough dependence on fossil fuel, I'm definitely buying this if this comes to Malaysia.
Really hope Nissan will use alternative channel to bring this into Malaysia.
Dear Tan Chong, you can continue selling old junks.
Paul, When this car in M'sia,does it mean 0% tax cause it does not have engine.
For electron cars we dont talk horsepower, we talk "cowpower" aka torque.
Ahhh, soon they will have a range extended leaf.
Erm, petrohead, I just recently get to know that there actually someone paying attention to those "1st lamer".
the hatch looks like latio ones..
hmm… wth… this is nice??? this is really bad design for me… doesn't convince me to buy it…
nice, looks like its on track to be the pioneer in mass market electric vehicle.
but it probably will not come here without the infrastructure.
i'll trade in my nissan latio sport if Leaf is priced around 110k
Nissan Daun
Nissan Daun look so weird
Please excuse my ignorance :(
"80kW electric motor"…. so does that mean that it will consume 80 kilowatt-hour of electricity when charging?
Or should that be 240 kWh (full charge of 3 hours)?
I'm trying to figure out how much it will cost in real ringgit and sen …. ;)
If im not mistaken the rating 80KW for the electric motors simply means the particular motor needs 80KW to be efficiently spinning at a certain RPM(Rotation per min), electric motor often comes with ratings of kw/hp and rpm and no. of poles. I dont know whether does this hold true for electric motor used for cars.
This is the type of car that we need TODAY! Not another big 3-4 liter luxury car, not a gaz guzzling 4 wheel drive, not in 5 to 10 years.