New Nissan Leaf Offers Faster Charger

January 10th, 2013 by Joshua S Hill

The new 2013 Nissan Leaf electric vehicle will be filled with improvements and will be manufactured in the United States, next door to the country’s largest lithium-ion automotive battery plant.

One of the big improvements in the new Nissan Leaf will be a faster charging time, thanks to a new, onboard, 6.6 kW charger that reduces 220V charging time nearly in half, down to approximately four hours for a full charge.

Additionally, the new 2013 Leaf will come in a cheaper (although currently unpriced) S model as well as the existing SV and SL grades.

An array of enhancements have been added to the Leaf SL, including leather-appointed seating and 17-inch aluminum-alloy wheels, while three new option packages have been made available, offering advanced systems such as Around View® Monitor and 7-speaker Bose® energy-efficient audio.

Most important the new Leaf is expected to offer improved range; though, any specs are being held back until closer to the vehicle’s on-sale date.

“The refinements and enhancements for 2013 hit at the core of customer requests during LEAF’s first two years – available features providing quicker charging, improved range expectations and the ability to fine-tune the equipment levels to exact owner needs, whether they desire fewer standard features for an even more affordable car or more luxury amenities like leather-appointed seating and premium audio,” said Nissan Division Vice President and General Manager Al Castignetti.

The full spec-list and press release detailing the changes and improvements to the 2013 Nissan Leaf range can be seen here.

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Tags: 2013 nissan leaf, charging, EV chargers, EV fast chargers, improved charging time, Nissan, Nissan Leaf, Nissan leaf chargers

About the Author

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

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BobR

The issue isn’t charging speed – it’s range. The best you can get now is 100 miles per charge – if you don’t use the heater, AC, do much stop and go and keep the speed under 50 mph. I knew that when I bought the car, but I believed the statements about Nissan offering upgrade paths for the onboard charge and battery upgrades – which were false. Now, like every other Leaf owner, I feel stranded and ignored.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Why do you think you should be getting battery upgrades when there are no better batteries available for the LEAF?
  
  Has Nissan told owners that they won’t be allowed to upgrade in future years when better batteries become available?
  - VT
    
    http://www.metricmind.com/leaf/main.htm
    
    My Leaf now recharges at hole in about 100 min without any EVSEs.
    
    That turn out to be VERY Handy.
http://profiles.google.com/robert.l.barnard Robert Barnard

i just tried to look up nissan.com and found a nasty story about Nissan Corp trying to put a little guy (Mr. Nissan) out of business who happens to own a business named Nissan. He claims the business dates back to when Nissan cars were called “Datsun”.

I still personally like the name Datsun.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Nissan has been building cars under the name Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. since June 1, 1934.
  
  I suspect your link to Nissan Computers doesn’t tell us about a computer company that was in operation before 1934 and, therefore, owns the name.
  Companies protect their names. If you think not, try operating Mickey Mouse Burgers.
http://www.facebook.com/christopher.lynt Christopher H Lynt

I’ll have to look into retrofitting my 2012 Leaf with the 6.6kW charger – they say the faster charger is an option on the 2013 Leaf and the 3.3kW is standard, so perhaps retrofitting is possible?
- Michael Hopkins
  
  Nope. This was supposed to be an option initially, but the guts change-out proved to be cost prohibitive (according to Nissan…they could have let us decide) so they nixed any upgrade options, sans aftermarket, of course.
Roger

Wow! That’s a major improvement. Still not fast enough though. With 4 hours to charge around 120-180km you get around .5-.75 km per minute charging speed.
I’ll bet that at least 4 km per minute charging speed is needed to push ICE cars back into the freezer, while the range is probably already good enough.
- Michael Hopkins
  
  Well, my LEAF came with the 480VDC charger, which isn’t great on the batteries, but does go from 0-80% in ~30min. However, there isn’t a single charger for that around here (UT), so it’s much like a rifle with no ammo…useless. Anyway, CA, WA, OR, AZ all have a bunch of these suckers, so we can only hope they’ll get here eventually.
Ronald Brak

I wonder if this means the new Leaf can accept standard European/Australian electricity?