Nissan Leaf

Electric pioneer aims to regain the limelight with an official range of up to 375 miles On sale Spring 2026 Price from £32,000 (est)

- OLIVER YOUNG

BABY'S FIRST WORD is a big event. Parents and relatives coo and all is excitement and celebration. Baby's second word, though... well, so what? It's inevitable. More of the same. It might not be until baby's first somersault that interest will be piqued again.

Nissan wants the new Leaf to be baby's first somersault. When the original Leaf first arrived in 2010 as the first mass-market electric family car, it naturally created a stir, but the second generation - while better in every way - had much tougher competition to deal with and struggled to stand out. It's up to the third-generation Leaf, then, to get back to being the centre of attention.

It's certainly more individual to look at than the previous Leaf, with a similar stature to the rival Kia EV3. It resembles a scaled-down Nissan Ariya, and indeed the Leaf borrows its underpinnings from that larger SUV. There are some neat details to set it apart, though, including 3D LED tail-lights.

The spec sheet is more eye-catching, too. Whereas the previous Leaf's 239-mile official range limited its appeal as an only car, the smaller of the new model's battery options (with a 52kWh usable capacity) promises 270 miles between charges and the bigger (75kWh) one up to 375 miles. These figures haven't been officially finalised yet, though, and could change.