Nissan-Renault chief Carlos Ghosn was in a buoyant mood in Tokyo as he presented an impressive electric vehicle armada.
With more than 20,000 sales worldwide, the Nissan LEAF EV hatchback is the world’s best-selling electric vehicle ever – Nissan says those 20,000 vehicles have cumulatively saved some 3.0-million litres of fuel. The Nissan LEAF goes into production in North America next year.
Taking that one step further at the Tokyo Motor Show, Nissan unveiled a LEAF sports concept developed by its motorsport division NISMO. With sports suspension, lowered ride height, racy alloy wheels, a sports bodykit and sporty interior inclusions, the Nissan LEAF Nismo was created from the Leaf Nismo RC – the world’s first all-electric race car.
Nissan also revealed the Esflow concept which is a two-seat EV sports coupe. Dramatically styled with some cues to the 370Z, the Nissan Esflow employs two electric motors to individually drive left and right-side front wheels and mounts its lithium ion battery longitudinally to improve weight distribution for more dynamic handling.
The Nissan Townpod is an interesting four-door EV which can convert from a passenger car to a commercial van. Rear passenger doors open rearwards while the luggage area is accessed by two ‘barn’ doors.
But most interest centred on the Nissan Pivo3 and two-door micro EV for city use. New technology includes ‘Automated Valet Parking’ whereby the vehicle self parks onto the nearest power grid for re-charging while you are absent and then automatically returns to you when summoned via a smartphone.
The compact Nissan PIVO3 can u0turn in just two metres – halft the width of a normal road.
