Japan Releases New All Electric Vehicle: “Leaf”

The EV market is currently dominated but Honda and Toyota and has generally been restricted to hybrid type vehicles.  However with Nissan’s announcement today of their all new “Leaf” vehicle, it will mark their entrance into the competitive market of electric and hybrid vehicles.

As of now there are still several problems that electric vehicles pose, restricting them from widespread popular use.  Road blocks such as short battery lifespan, costly technology, and the building of nationwide spread charging stations has hindered their entrance into the mainstream market.

Nissan claims to have solved some of these issues with their new vehicle “Leaf”, which has a battery lifespan of 100 miles per charge.  Additionally, “Leaf’s” lithium-ion batteries can be leased making the cost more economically comparable with cars that run on petrol.

Carlos Ghosen, chief executive on the Nissan project, said “[it is] the unveiling of a real world car that has zero - not simply reduced - emissions.”

Next year, “Leaf” will go on sale in the United States and Japan with full scale world wide release scheduled for 2012.  Nissan hopes by 2012 its factories will be producing more than 100,000 of these a year.

The “Leaf” is designed to be a competitive alternative for the Prius and Insight hybrids made by Toyota and Honda respectively.

Special thanks to independent.co.uk for the above quote, for more information please view the article on their website.