Is It Plus Enough?

Nissan’s top leaf finally has battery range on par with other affordable EVS.

- Kim Reynolds

Remember the horsepower wars of the 1960s?

In yet another twist on Mark Twain’s alleged saying, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” the car industry is humming its 50-year-old horsepower one-upmanship tune once again. But now there’s a new verse, with the lyrics “miles of battery range” instead of “plain old’ horsepower.”

A snapshot of the current BEV-range leader board of affordable EV offerings looks like this: Hyundai Kona (258 miles), Kia Soul (243 miles), Kia Niro (239 miles), and Chevrolet Bolt (238 miles).

Where pray tell, is the biggest-selling affordable EV of them all, the Nissan Leaf? When its second generation was introduced two years ago in Japan, the Bolt’s then-staggering 238 number had already been announced. Needless to say, that cast a pall over the Tokyo proceedings as Nissan struggled to justify the new Leaf’s 150-mile range. Sure, sure, we all nodded in agreement; of course, it’s way better than the first gen’s 107 miles. But it was as if Ford pulled the sheet off a Mustang with 37 percent fewer ponies than the existing Camaro. The guys in Yokohama had miscalculated. They knew it. And Scout’s honor, they promised a bigger-battery fix, ASAP.

True to its word, here’s the car Nissan wishes it had actually introduced: the descriptively named Leaf Plus.