Electric vehicle manufacturers have been trying to strike the right balance between range, performance, and price. Electric vehicles can achieve longer range than they do now with the use of larger batteries, or with the use of lithium-polymer batteries which have a higher energy-to-weight ratio. However, these options increase vehicle cost.
I am sure Nissan’s designers have been thinking about whether their customers would be more willing to pay extra for a longer-range Leaf, or if the higher price would turn off a larger number of prospective customers. Share your thoughts about this in the comment section.
Nissan’s Barcelona Technical Centre has now decided to take the longer-range option into serious consideration. It equipped one of its Nissan Leaf prototypes with a 48 kWh battery bank in order to be tested in the ECOseries race, which is based in Spain.
Image Credit: Nissan Leaf via Flickr.
The ECOseries event is open to anyone with a driver’s license, and road vehicles. Nissan’s upgraded Leaf competed with vehicles from other manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Peugeot, Volkswagen, and Porsche.
According to Inside EVs: “Mercedes won in regularity discipline, but having a 48-kWh LEAF prototype may indicate that Nissan is thinking of increasing energy and range of future LEAF versions.”
A 48 kWh battery pack may provide nearly twice the range of the Leaf’s current 24 kW one, but it is also much more powerful, facilitating the use of a more powerful motor.
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