













Nissan







Thank Tesla, blame Dieselgate: whatever the reason, the fact remains that the auto industry is finally taking electrification seriously. And Nissan has been doing it better—and longer—than most when it comes to electric vehicles. On sale since 2010, the Leaf is the world's best-selling EV. Now in its second generation, there's a long-range version in the works scheduled for 2019.

The previous Leaf’s design wasn’t popular with the majority of people, so its look couldn’t contribute to sales. The new car is lower, wider and sportier, with the point of this design being to get greater accessibility of the market.

There might also be a go-fast Leaf in the works. Nissan showed off a NISMO-badged version of the EV at the Tokyo Motor Show, and design chief Alfonso Albaisa told Autocar that a more muscular look ought to sell a few more cars.

It's not without precedent: Nissan will give pretty much anything the NISMO treatment (with surprisingly good results), and in the past, Japanese customers have been able to NISMOify their first-gen Leafs.

That wasn't the only performance-focused EV news, either. Nissan also revealed that it's going racing in Formula E, entering in the fifth season, which runs between 2018 and 2019. It will not be an all-new entry; Nissan will instead replace one of the existing OEMs in the series. There's some speculation that it could replace Renault, which has had a lot of Formula E success and which is also closely entwined with the Japanese automaker. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Nissan instead take the place of Faraday Future, which seems to be pulling back from its involvement in the sport as its troubles grow.

Beyond all of that, Nissan's big reveal in Tokyo was the IMx, an electric autonomous concept. It's built on Nissan's new EV platform, and the car would use an advanced version of the self-driving tech that Nissan has just started testing on the streets of Tokyo. Nissan promises it would be pretty fun to drive, with 320kW and 700Nm on tap, plus a battery that's redesigned and engineered for greater energy density.

Finally, Nissan EVs will soon have their own distinctive sound. Called "Canto," it varies in tone and pitch if the car is accelerating, decelerating, or reversing. The danger of pedestrians being run over by now-silent vehicles has some regulators worried, and countries are now requiring EVs to broadcast their arrival with some kind of sound. Here in the US, that system was supposed to go into effect this year, but the Trump administration may well purge the requirement from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards . You can get an idea of what Canto sounds like in this video: