The Nissan Leaf, making its way to Australia

August 1, 2018

Nissans foray into the electric car industry is paying off with the release of the updated Nissan Leaf. With a top speed of 144km/h and a range of 400km, Nissan is proving what it’s made of and certainly what it’s capable of moving forward in an industry thats future is slightly unpredictable.

The technology still has a long way to go for electric and hybrid vehicles to become standard. The charging abilities are still only reaching about 10 hours. You won’t be going on an around Australia Road Trip quickly any time soon, but with the recent leaps in technology,  it won’t be long.

The New Leaf outdoes its previous model with more than double the drive time, at 400km. The previous model could only manage 172km on a full charge. This upgrade has proven a  success, with 40,000 of the energy efficient vehicles already on order.

The Nissan Leaf recently took out the World Green Car of the Year award at the 2018 World Car Awards. The awards were announced at the New York International Auto Show in April. Nissan had left its closest competitors, Chrysler and BMW behind to its dust, but not its petrol fumes.

The New Nissan Leaf

Nissan has been well ahead of the game in its early use of green technology, releasing fully EV vehicles before some companies had even assembled an engineering team. In an interview with the Financial Times, Carlos Ghosn, the Nissan CEO, has said that the car industry is one that ‘is in the dark… disrupted because of connectivity, artificial intelligence, because electric cars are going to be part of the future, because also consumers are changing, they don’t want to only own a car, sometimes they want to share it. The industry is asking itself how it will catch up’.

But Ghosn has been an up-starter in innovation since taking over Nissan. With the Nissan Leaf, which has been around since 2010, already having 200,000 cars on the road. Leaving Nissan well ahead of its time; and any other car brands.

Ghosn told the Harvard Business Review in 2016, that the future of electric vehicles ‘depends on governments willingness to create laws on emissions and put in basic recharging stations.’ Which at the moment is proving the biggest issure for the technology.

‘The Leaf can go 100 miles on battery power, but that’s not enough… They want 200 or 400 miles.’ He said.

The Nissan leaf is not currently available on the market in Australia. But Nissan has recently announced that the Leaf will make it to Australian shores in the coming year. Leaving Nissan miles ahead of Elon Musk’s industry shaker Tesla, whose latest model, the Tesla Model 3, not expected to arrive on Australian shores until 2020 at the earliest.

For more info:

For more information about the Nissan Leaf, checkout http://www.nissan.com.au/leaf

To register your interest http://www.nissan.com.au/forms/2017-leaf-register-your-interest

Or head to Nissan Bendigo  to get in touch with your local and trusted Nissan dealer.