Nissan Leaf Reborn: 600km-Range SUV Revolution

[PCauto] Nissan officially announced the third generation Leaf on March 26, 2025. This classic electric car has undergone two generational upgrades since its debut in 2010. The third generation of Nissan Leaf has transformed from a traditional hatchback into a crossover SUV. The upgrades in many aspects greatly enchance the competitiveness of Nissan Leaf.

In terms of technical platform, the new Leaf adopts the CMF-EV platform of the Renault - Nissan - Mitsubishi Alliance, which is also applied to the larger SUV Ariya and is closely related to the upcoming pure electric Juke.

The new Leaf, based on the CMF-EV platform, incorporates the style of Ariya. In terms of body size, although it is slightly shorter than the previous generation, the height is increased, meanwhile the crossover SUV shape makes its visual effect more imposing. In addition, the new     Leaf has been optimized baeds on aerodynamics, with a drag coefficient of only 0.25, significantly improving the energy efficiency and range performance of the vehicle.

François Bailly, the head of Nissan's European product pision, said that Leaf's range will exceed 598.68 kilometers, significantly imroving over the previous model. Nissan emphasizes that the real-world range performance, especially at highway speeds, is the foucus of vehicle's development. The new Leaf has greatly improved in driving range.

It's notworthy that in US, the new Leaf will be equipped with the North American Charging Standard (NACS) port and can access Tesla's charging network.

As early as 2018, Nissan announced that it would launch a new generation of Leaf in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. However, interms of the actual market performance, the sales of Leaf in Southeast Asia are not satisfactory.

Take the Thai market for example, in March 2024, only 2 units of Toyota's main pure electric vehicle bZ4X were sold, and the sales of Nissan Leaf were only 6 units. The overall market share of Japanese electric vehicles in Thailand was once squeezed to a mere 1% by Chinese brands. At the same time, Chinese auto companies have captured about 80% of the market share in the Thai electric vehicle market, among which BYD won the annual sales champion in the Thai electric vehicle market in 2024 with 27,005 units sold, and the market share was as high as 38.5%.

In such a market backdrop, the new Leaf, with its great improvement  in range performance, is expected to reshape its position in the Southeast Asian market. Compared with the currently outstanding BYD Atto 3 , the new Leaf has certain competitive advantages.

The BYD Atto 3 underwent a minor upgrade in September 2024, with its battery pack increasing from 49.92kWh to 60.48kWh. This enhancement extends its range from 410 km to 480 km, while DC fast-charging power has been boosted from 70kW to 88kW.

However, the new Leaf has surpassed BYD Atto 3 in driving performance, with its nearly 600 km range. In terms of power performance, the Atto 3 is equipped with a front-mounted electric motor, with a horsepower of 203PS, a torque of 310Nm, and the 0-100 km acceleration time has been improved from 7.9 seconds to 7.3 seconds. Although the new Leaf has not released detailed power data, based on the new platform and the trend of performance improvement, its power performance is also worthy of the expectation.