Next year, with the arrival of the 2019 Nissan Leaf, Nissan expects to lure premium car customers.

While most of the time we compare electric cars with other electric cars, now we should start comparing them to the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars that they’ll be replacing.

It’s common knowledge that it’s much cheaper and easier to improve performance with electric motors than with ICE. Knowing this, Nissan will use their electric cars to steal away customers from premium automakers and BMW is the number one target.

Make no mistake, behind closed doors Nissan expects the 2019 MY Leaf to compete with the petrol and diesel BMW 1 Series hatchback. It doesn’t care about the small electric BMW i3.

Performance and price wise, the 2019 Nissan Leaf can compete with the BMW 1 Series hatchback, furthermore the Leaf will have the refinement that only electric drivetrains can provide.

Let’s see the prices of the petrol BMW 1 Series 5-door hatchback with automatic transmission in Germany.

Now let’s see the specs of the normal version Nissan Leaf and a preview of what is expected for the e-Plus version.

Tesla already proved that is easier to achieve higher performance with electric cars and dominates its niche, next year Nissan will start testing the formula in a broader market.

In Europe, approximately 10.000 BMW 1 Series cars are sold each month. We’ll see if the Nissan Leaf e-Plus can sell that much.

What do you think about Nissan’s strategy of using electric cars to compete with current premium automakers?