Nissan is celebrating the fifth birthday of the Leaf – the world’s best selling pure-electric vehicle. Since its launch in 2010, almost 200,000 have been sold around the world, with around 10,000 of those in the UK.
As a new, longer range Leaf 30kWh is set to be launched at the beginning of next year, Nissan has rounded up some of the key facts that Leaf owners have racked up over the years.
Leaf custoemrs have covered more than two billion km (1.2 billion miles) – the equivilent of 2,600 round trips to the moon. Nissan has calculated that more than 328,000 tonnes of CO2 have been saved.
The 200,000th Leaf will be delivered in January, with the electric Nissan proving hugely popular in Europe, the United States and Japan, which account for 90 per cent of all Leaf sales. The US has almost half of all Leaf ownership at around 90,000 vehicles on American roads, while Japan has 50,000 Leafs and Europe around 40,000. With the UK sitting at almost 10,000 models, it is clear that the market is an improtant one for Nissan in Europe.
Since the first Leaf rolled off the assembly line in 2010, the EV has gathered in more than 90 awards, including the prestigious titles of Car of the Year in Japan and Europe, and the World Car of the Year prize too.
Going forward, Nissan launches the Leaf 30kWh in the next couple of months, which extends the car’s range by around 20 per cent. Japanese customers receive their first Leaf 30kWh cars this month, while Europe has to wait until after Christmas with first deliveries in January 2016.
Nissan has also committed around 2.7 billion pounds to EV projects, with Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, regularly stating that EVs are the future of the Renault-Nissan Alliance line-up. A new Leaf is expected in the next two to three years which is likely to have almost twice the range of the current model.
Ghosn said: “EV technology will continue to be at the heart of Nissan’s product development efforts. By combining our pioneering EV technologies and other intelligence and innovations, Nissan is moving closer to a zero-emission future for car transportation. With the technologies we are creating, mobility is becoming safer, cleaner, more connected and more exciting. That’s the power of innovation. And that’s what you can expect from Nissan.”
