With 4W EV segment growing by the day, Nissan is looking at launching its acclaimed Leaf EV in India
Nissan Motor India has been doing reasonably well. Once on the brink of shutdown, is now stabilised by strategic launch of Magnite. Industry experts hail Magnite as the vehicle that saved Nissan’s existence in India. That same powertrain and platform combo was utilised by Renault to launch Kiger. Right now, Nissan only has Magnite as its top seller as the aging Kicks is pretty much at the end of its life cycle.
Nissan also used to manufacture and sell Datsun products. But that didn’t work out well and Nissan pulled the plug on Datsun brand in 2022. But Nissan is in the news recently due to new development. This new development is in the form of a Save The Date invite for an event held in Delhi on 18th of October.
Nissan Leaf Launch ?
Not much has been revealed by the invite, except for the date and time. The boldest part of the invite, are two words – Move Beyond. This is a slogan Nissan has been using to market their new age cars, especially their electric vehicles.
Speaking of new cars, Nissan has not been spied testing much these days. The only new Nissan car that has been doing test rounds recently, is the Leaf electric car. It is very likely that the event on 18th October in New Delhi will see the debut of Leaf in India.
We spotted a Nissan Leaf under testing here in India in April of this year. It was a red-coloured unit spotted in Delhi. However, Nissan Leaf test mules have been spotted in 2019 too. Nissan was toying with the idea of launching its Leaf here in India. But that has not happened yet. Speaking about the car itself, Leaf EV has a good reputation worldwide. With Leaf EV, Nissan has been among the early adopters in EV tech, unlike Toyota which is foraying into EVs recently.
Specs & Features
Leaf will get an EM57 electric motor that draws its juice from a 40 kWh Li-ion battery pack. Nissan Leaf is capable of 146 bhp of power and 320 Nm of peak torque. It claims an estimated range of 240km on a single charge as per NEDC test cycles. Globally, Nissan offers two types of AC chargers with Leaf- a 3kW unit and a 6kW unit. The former takes 16 hours for the battery to replenish while the latter takes 8 hours.
Nissan Leaf could be brought into the country via CBU route. Hence, Leaf is expected to be very well-kitted. Apart from the usual features like sunroof, touchscreen and all, Nissan Leaf is likely to pack cutting-edge tech like ProPilot (a single-lane autonomous driving) along with semi-autonomous driving systems. Nissan Leaf will offer an e-Pedal mode for one-pedal driving. A host of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) safety features like lane departure warning, blind-spot warning and emergency braking system, among many, are also likely to be in the kit.
Competition could be from Nexon EV Max, which offers a 40 kWh battery and single motor configuration with similar power, torque and range figures. We also have MG ZS EV and Hyundai Kona which are an upgrade over Nexon EV Max. BYD is also getting ready to launch their Atto 3 electric SUV.
