Nissan's mould-breaking electric hatchback closes in on its dotage by pitching to steal buyers from the Chinese brands
The second-generation of the pioneering Nissan Leaf electric hatchback is now fading slowly towards retirement. It inherited quite a legacy from its mould-setting predecessor, which became the first truly globally sold, mass-produced, all-electric vehicle of the modern era when it entered production in 2010. It wasn’t until 2020 that even the mighty Tesla could eclipse the Leaf’s tally of commercial success, when the Tesla Model 3 finally overtook it for cumulative sales of any single model. To date, more than 650,000 ‘Leaves’ have been sold the world over since 2010; one in the eye for the Renault Zoe which, while more popular in Europe, itself never made it through the half-million-unit mark.Nissan replaced the jelly-mould-like first-generation car with this sharper-looking second one in 2017; and, at the time, the improvements it made on its forebear (battery range went up by 50%, motor power by 40%, and torque by 25%) looked sizable. It went further still and launched an ‘e+’ version of the car in 2019, which pushed electric range up as far as 239 miles.Such is the pace at which the mass-market electric car has advanced since then, however, that the Leaf now offers notably less performance, battery range and rapid charging speed than key rivals; and so it has been forced to compete for business at the budget end of the class, the larger-batteried version of thecar having been discontinued in 2023.While local UK production of the car at Nissan’s Sunderland factory wound up in March 2024, enough dealer stock exists to see the car through the rest of this year and into 2025. So is there still some rational appeal to find in this electric old-stager?
