New 2017 Nissan Leaf: More Details On New Styling, Range

Lithium-ion battery pack of 2011 Nissan Leaf, showing cells assembled into modules

The Nissan Leaf is by far the highest-volume electric car ever built, with 110,000-plus on the roads now.

And three and a half years after its launch, Nissan is pushing hard to boost its sales all over the world. But what about the next Nissan Leaf, one designed with several years of battery development since the original?  We now know that the next-generation Leaf--likely a 2017 model--will remain a compact five-door hatchback, the most popular body style globally.

But the next Nissan Leaf will have slightly less oddball design cues--and it will offer a choice of battery-pack sizes at different price ranges.

The latter, we already knew, but the news that its styling will be closer to the mainstream we hadn't known until now. 

Longer range from all-new battery

As reported by trade journal Automotive News, Nissan executives shed more light on the second-generation Leaf in comments at the Beijing Auto Show.

Andy Palmer, the always-informative executive vice president who's Nissan's product chief, said a new battery chemistry will debut "by 2017" in both the next Leaf and--slightly beforehand--an all-electric Infiniti luxury sedan.

Before that, however, the current Leaf will be updated with a slightly revised cell chemistry that is much more tolerant of extremely hot-weather conditions. Palmer called the all-new chemistry for 2017 "the game-changing technology," for its greater energy density and hence its longer range.

He told Automotive News that the new formulation is "all about range and energy density," and said that for Nissan, the technology is "moving very, very fast."

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