Nissan Leaf

One of the biggest upgrades to the new Leaf is its powertrain, which offers ample power, a more livable range, and better cooling that should improve its battery life. We found the Leaf’s 214-hp drivetrain to be quiet and smooth, with more than enough get-up-and-go to accelerate onto highways with ease. The U.S.’s cheapest EV (at the time of this writing) is surprisingly fun thanks to its ample torque—261 lb.-ft. of it, to be exact. There are three drive modes on the Leaf: Eco, Standard, and Sport, and even the economy-tuned Eco mode can hold its own in passing zones.

That power was also easy to modulate with the Leaf’s accelerator pedal. Setting off from a stop is smooth, and we found the Leaf’s overall power to be very easy to control.

“Instant-on torque to the front tires does mean it’s pretty easy to get some front wheelspin when taking off while turning, even if you’re not trying too hard,” said one of our testers. “But the traction control does a decent job harnessing it.”

A less expensive, lower-range S version is coming later with a smaller 52-kWh battery, which may be a nice option for those who need an inexpensive in-town runabout only. However, we found the 75-kWh battery version to be livable for longer trips, albeit still behind its competition when it comes to maximum charging rates.

Better yet, the battery now has a more modern active cooling system, which uses liquid to keep the battery at a more optimal operating temperature. Previously, the Leaf’s battery was air-cooled, which didn’t work as well in hotter and colder climates. This solves another one of our issues with our last-gen Leaf: these extra fluctuations in battery temperature can degrade it faster over time.

Finally, the Nissan Leaf feels like more than just a commuter car, with enough range to feel comfortable going on longer trips, going from an EPA-rated driving range of 149 to 212 miles to a range of 259 to 303 miles.

The Platinum+ model Nissan loaned us had a 259-mile range, the lowest offered on the new Leaf. With only one stop to top off its range, it handled a roughly 270-mile road trip from central Connecticut to the Boston area and back without giving me any range anxiety. If I had the 288- or 303-mile SV+ or S+ and initially set off with a full battery, there’s a chance I could have made the rest of the way without needing to stop.

Another major way in which Nissan brought its Leaf into the current era is the replacement of its CHAdeMO DC fast-charging port with a NACS one. CHAdeMO was an older charging standard favored primarily by Japanese manufacturers, and compatible fast chargers were always difficult to find. NACS, on the other hand, is the plug style that EV manufacturers have settled on for North American-market vehicles. This not only opens up Tesla’s existing and extensive Supercharger network for Leafs to use, but more new stations will include NACS chargers as more EVs incorporate those plugs.

Additionally, the Leaf moved its charging ports from the nose of the car to its front fenders, with its AC charge port on one side and DC charge port on the other. Fortunately, it’s really easy to tell which is which, thanks to easy-to-read arrows next to the charger icon on the driver’s instrument display. A single arrow points to the slower AC charger, and the side with the faster DC charger gets highlighted with two arrows. We also find that front-mounted charge port flaps tend to get dirty more quickly than ports mounted on the sides of the car.

Performance of the AC-charging port—which uses a similarly common J1772 port and is the typical standard used for home-charging—also increased from a max acceptance rate of 6.6 kW to 7.2 kW. Instead of adding 21 miles per hour at its peak speeds, the new Leaf can now add up to 26 miles per hour.

Nissan didn’t just extend the Leaf’s range, it also made longer trips easier with its intuitive route-planning features. This is one of the standout features of the Leaf’s Google Built-In infotainment system, as route guidance on the Leaf’s native navigation system takes into account range estimates and includes charging stops along the way. When the battery starts to get low, the Leaf also does a good job of prompting you to find a charger and bringing up suggested chargers that make sense along your given route.

Changing the charging destination was simple, too. At one point during a longer trip, I wanted to divert to a DC fast charger in a shopping center so I could get some errands out of the way while I waited for it to fill up the battery. The system warned me that I would arrive with a lower-than-ideal state of charge, but it didn’t automatically redirect me against my wishes back to its preferred charger.

Finding that charger was simple, too, as the Leaf’s navigation system allows you to filter chargers by speed, plug type, and charging network, and it also tells you how many chargers there are at a given location. While charger availability data hasn’t always been entirely accurate for me in the past across the multiple apps and systems that offer it, it certainly helps to see when there are a lot of chargers at a given location, as that means there’s a greater chance that at least one of those will be open and working.

While you won’t mistake the new Leaf for a corner-carving sports car, it does a nice job of balancing predictable handling with its comfortable ride quality. Even though its dimensions didn’t change that much over the previous Leaf, it does feel like a taller, more softly sprung crossover. Body roll is well controlled at lower speeds, but you start to notice it shift its weight from side to side more if you start to push it down a curvier road.

Still, we were impressed by the Leaf’s relatively quick steering rack, which is fairly light in its Standard driving mode but still does a nice job of communicating what’s going on with the road surface and the tires’ grip levels. Our testers preferred the extra feedback in Sport mode, which also increases the steering heft somewhat, but not so much that the Leaf becomes difficult to drive.

The Leaf’s tires aren’t the grippiest, but the chassis feels well-balanced and was very responsive to changes in its accelerator pedal position on CR’s test track. Let off the pedal just a bit, and you can even get it to oversteer a little. It’s one of the more fun-to-drive small electric crossovers compared to the others in CR’s test fleet. While it can feel floaty through those tighter turns, and the body of the car flops a bit if you change directions on tighter turns at higher speeds, its electronic stability control does a good job of keeping the Leaf’s handling manageable.

One of the biggest improvements over the previous generation is the new Leaf’s ride quality. While the old Leaf felt a bit stiff and often transmitted the force of harsher bumps directly to your spine, the new Leaf’s softer suspension is much more forgiving. 

The suspension is pretty nicely damped, and I never had any harsh moments, or really even close to one,” said one of our testers. The Leaf still exhibits some minor front-to-rear pitching over harsher bumps, especially at speeds over 35 mph, but doesn’t move much from side to side and remains easy to control accordingly. For the most part, its suspension does a great job of absorbing individual impacts from potholes and bumps in the road as well.

The Leaf’s seats—at least in the more nicely appointed Platinum+ model Nissan lent to us—were very supportive and comfortable, both in the front and the back. The power front seats on the Leaf’s two upper trims have ample adjustment, including for the lumbar support on the Platinum+. The bolstering on the seatback and seat bottom cushion is just enough to hold you in place without being too aggressive for everyday driving.

The rear seats also weren’t an afterthought. While we had mixed opinions of their roominess, the seats are nicely padded, but still supportive, plus they feature some mild bolstering to keep you in place. “You at least feel a little bit like you’re sitting ‘in’ the seat, not just on it,” said one tester. There’s also a nicely padded drop-down armrest with cup holders in the center. You won’t mistake this for an executive sedan by any means, but for a subcompact electric SUV, the rear seats enjoy a respectable amount of space.

While other storage areas left a bit to be desired, there are two bins we really appreciated.

The pad for the wireless phone charger is tucked under the end of the center armrest between the two front seats, partially shielding it from view in a way that doesn’t distract the driver with flashing phone notifications. While some phones still overheated when left on the pad for longer periods of time, its design was really clever. A small but obvious light comes on at the end of the armrest to let you know it’s charging, and it’s not so hidden away that it’s easy to forget your phone when you leave the car.

While there is no frunk, Nissan did include some shallow under-floor storage in the rear hatch that can conceal smaller cargo in a more hidden space. Better yet, you can install its cover vertically to leave the top of this well open, creating a divided space to keep cargo from rolling around too much.

When it comes to looks, the new Leaf’s design punches above its price point. A trendy fastback-style roofline features chrome trim meant to evoke the Nissan Z sports car, and the Platinum+ model’s cool 3D-effect taillights borrow the effect from flashy Japanese pachinko machines. Two-tone color schemes are available to highlight the roof even more. Easter eggs abound, with motifs pairing twos and threes in the taillights, wheel designs, and floor mats. “Two-three” is “ni-san” in Japanese, get it?

It all shows that thought and care were put into the Leaf’s styling instead of just relying on it being the cheapest. The Platinum+ model we borrowed featured a striking faux-leather interior with white seats and pearlescent purple-blue trim. It featured upmarket-looking padded surfaces throughout the interior, including a soft, pleather-wrapped steering wheel.

However, there’s a considerable drop-off in luxe appointments to the SV+ we just purchased, which trades more of those fabric surfaces for hard plastics. Yet there’s still some stylish nods in the lower trims, as you can get fun metallic blue interior accents in the SV+, and the base S+’s black fabric interior has cool, patterned-fabric seat inserts that feel like a ‘90s throwback.

In profile, the Leaf’s sleekness is very apparent. The windshield follows the same angle as the front-fender cutline, with a steep rake that makes the new EV look less upright than its predecessor. The roofline gently curves over the cabin before aggressively dropping down where it intersects with the tailgate.

A single line runs the car’s width from the headlights to the taillights, just under the side windows and bisecting the charger port door on either side. A pronounced scallop on the doors enhances the wheel arches, giving them a more muscular appearance.

At the rear, the roofline meets the glass liftgate, which angles down to a small lip spoiler that arches the width of the Leaf. Beneath that is a black panel that stretches the width of the tailgate and blends into the taillights on the rear fenders. It features the Nissan logo and is framed by two horizontal rectangular reflectors and three vertical rectangular taillights on each side.

With EVs becoming more mainstream, we appreciated that the new Leaf doesn’t overwhelm you with too much form-over-function silliness to remind you that it’s an EV. It feels downright normal in here, with a designated panel for the climate controls, plus a ton of conventional stalks and buttons. There’s a glossy black panel of physical buttons and switches for the power-adjustable mirrors and windows that felt well-made and pleasant to use.

Nissan doesn’t force you to use its onscreen user interface, either, as some manufacturers do. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay worked wirelessly without any issues, and the Leaf can even show directions from the Waze navigation app in front of the driver, both on the head-up display and driver’s information panel.

Not everything in the interior is a slam dunk—there’s a number of touch-sensitive panels in place of physical buttons that sacrifice usability for style—but you won’t need to see which onscreen menu-within-a-menu houses many of the most frequently accessed controls.

It’s impossible to ignore that it’s the least expensive EV on sale at the time of this writing. It would be one thing if it really felt like it, but we think the new Leaf is easily worth considering if you want an electric vehicle but don’t want to break the bank over it.

Nissan increased the Leaf’s maximum DC fast-charging acceptance rate from 50 kW to 150 kW, which is a massive improvement, but it still feels slightly behind the times, especially given that the Leaf will likely hang around for a few years as Nissan’s competitors release increasingly faster-charging vehicles. Nissan claims that the new Leaf can recharge from a 10 percent state of charge (SOC) to 80 percent in 35 minutes, adding up to 9 miles of range per minute at its top charging speeds. We would have liked to see a maximum fast-charging acceptance rate closer to 200 kW—jumping to 10 or 11 miles added per minute of charging—for the Leaf to truly feel like it’s on par with other new EVs. A couple of extra miles per minute may not sound like much, but we’re talking an extra 60 miles added over the course of a half-hour.

Overall, I didn’t find it to be that inconvenient; it’s just not competitive with the rest of the market as even faster charging speeds are becoming more common. I stayed a bit longer on a fast charger rated for speeds up to 350 kW—well over the Leaf’s maximum acceptance rate—going from a 7% percent SOC to just over 90% percent in 51 minutes. This was under somewhat optimal conditions for recharging, as it was during a mild autumn day with temperatures in the mid-sixties. (Extreme heat and winter cold can affect charging and battery performance, and to the Leaf’s credit it adjusts its charging speed estimates when temperatures are cold.) Charging speeds slow significantly as the battery approaches 100%, percent, which likely explains the extra time over the manufacturer’s estimate, but we will certainly keep a closer eye on its charging capabilities as we test our own purchased Leaf.

While many EVs allow you to bring the car to a complete stop using regenerative braking—letting you drive using only the accelerator pedal—the Leaf does not. A quirk in Japanese law requires vehicles on sale there to use both an accelerator pedal and a brake pedal to drive, and since the Leaf is also sold in that market, Nissan opted to skip adding this feature.

In its place is the e-Step driving mode, which you can select using a button on the dashboard. This increases the regeneration to its maximum level, but we found it difficult to drive smoothly, as deceleration happens abruptly when you start to lift off the accelerator pedal. It’s sort of like dropping a boat anchor out of the back of the Leaf, only that anchor isn’t designed to bring the vehicle to a full stop. (It still can at times, but generally only from very slow speeds and over a longer distance than a true one-pedal driving mode.)

Instead of e-Step, I preferred using the paddles behind the steering wheel to increase the regeneration level to 4 out of 4 in heavy traffic, as deceleration is smoother and more gradual while working nearly as well as e-Step. Still, those who are used to one-pedal driving in EVs will miss it here.

The Leaf’s spongy-feeling brakes do not exactly inspire confidence, lacking the kind of linear, predictable braking force we’d prefer to see. The Leaf’s soft pedal hardly slows the car when you initially press it, but as you press it down further its braking force increases rapidly with almost too much force. Quicker stops require applying a lot of pressure to the brake pedal. We found it relatively hard to brake smoothly at first, although some of CR’s testers got used to its behavior over time.

Worse yet, the Leaf’s brake pedal moves up and down when e-Step is enabled. This makes it even harder to predict how much pressure you need to apply for the brakes to engage, which is a problem given that e-Step is not a true one-pedal driving system and you will sometimes have to press the brake pedal to stop the car.

The biggest downgrade from the previous-generation Leaf is its user interface, which moved more basic settings onto a touchscreen and a slick panel of touch-sensitive “buttons,” among a few other baffling design choices.

That slick panel houses most of the frequently accessed climate controls, and while it’s nice to have them always immediately available, they’re more difficult to use than the old Leaf’s series of simple knobs and physical buttons. The fan speed buttons sit pretty far to the right and were a bit of a stretch for some testers to reach, and others found that the controls at the left edge of the panel were blocked by the steering wheel. Worse yet, you have to open an onscreen climate control menu to change the direction of the car’s airflow, as it is not included on this panel.

Confirming that your finger is in the right place on the climate control panel requires taking your eyes off the road, and its location just under the main touchscreen makes it too easy to accidentally hit something on the screen instead. There are beeps to confirm that you did, in fact, engage one of these capacitive-touch buttons. However, they are very quiet and hard to notice, especially if you’re using the stereo or traveling at high enough speeds where wind noise becomes an issue. There isn’t any haptic feedback when these buttons are engaged, either.

As for the screen, the Leaf’s mostly monochrome menu icons can be hard to see, especially if you pick a lighter screen background with less contrast against the whites and grays Nissan uses. The system also lags somewhat, which we noticed when using both the onscreen and the physical controls.

There are thankfully still some physical controls; however, we weren’t big fans of the push-button gear selector on the dashboard. At least it’s placed relatively high and is easy to see at a glance, with big buttons and large text on each.

We also didn’t like the steering wheel controls, which are on a slick panel instead of separate buttons, and it’s too easy to select the wrong function. There’s one more row of buttons on this panel than there should be for it to work well, as you need to have a somewhat precise press to select the right button. Tiny, hard-to-see icons for each function also left me wondering, “What are these? Controls for ants?”

While voice controls can be a workaround for some of these awkward user interface decisions, the Leaf’s system had issues understanding some of our voices at times. It also pauses all other audio when it’s speaking, including navigation directions.

In addition to the awkward controls, which force you to go into a menu within a menu to turn the heated steering wheel on or off, or to adjust the airflow direction, the climate system itself is somewhat anemic. It takes longer than it should to warm up the seats, steering wheel, and seemingly general inside temperature, although Automatic mode does a good job of maintaining that temperature once it’s fully running.

We found some of the Leaf’s driver assistance features to be less than intuitive to use, and not always on par with some of the best systems available today. Unlike other recently redesigned Nissans like the Rogue, the Leaf doesn’t offer the hands-free ProPilot Assist 2.0 driving system. Its hands-on adaptive cruise control did well at maintaining highway speeds and reacting to changes in traffic, but we found its closest gap distance to still be too far away.

Engaging the Leaf’s adaptive cruise control and lane centering assistance at the same time involves juggling menus on opposite sides of the steering wheel. They seemed to work fine enough together when they were enabled, but the lane-centering feature wasn’t particularly good at keeping the vehicle within its own lane. Fortunately, the system doesn’t fight you when you help steer through curves, but we wouldn’t rely on it alone. Lane departure warning and lane keeping assistance both engaged inconsistently and too late to be of much help. Lane keeping assistance also jerks the wheel too sharply when it activates.

The Leaf’s electric motor may be quiet, but the wind noise that starts to appear around 45 to 50 mph—and worsens from there—is not. On one trip in CR’s recently purchased Leaf SV+, I noticed that the driver’s-side exterior rear-view mirror even started to vibrate a little at speed.

Overall, we noticed a fair amount of road noise from the Leaf’s tires as well. Combined, these sounds are enough to drown out the quiet beeps from the climate control panel.

Driving position (for some of us)

The loaned Leaf had comfortable front seats, but not all of us had the best time fitting into them. As a shorter driver, I felt as if the seat lacked adequate foot and knee room if you need to sit further forward. I kept knocking my knees on the steering column and dashboard when I got in and out. The left footrest also sits slightly higher in relation to the accelerator pedal, which wasn’t comfortable for me. Others noted that certain controls were a bit of a reach from the driver’s seat, particularly those which sit further right on the dashboard’s center stack.

On the flip side, one of our taller testers wished for more up-and-down seat adjustability—specifically, the ability to sit lower in the car. The Leaf now has an upright, SUV-like seating position, especially when compared to the low driving position of the previous generation.

Others found it easy to get comfortable, hence the parenthetical disclaimer for this section. The center console doesn’t intrude into the driver’s leg room. The now-telescoping steering wheel offers a solid range of downward and outward adjustability, even if it often blocked the view of certain functions and displays on the dashboard. One driver still wished it could move further upward, however.

Forward visibility is pretty good, but thick windshield pillars at the lower corners got in the way for some drivers. The roof pillars are even larger towards the rear of the car, creating a sizable blind spot at the rear corners. Visibility out of the back of the car is poor, largely thanks to the car’s angled roof and hatchback design, which result in a small rear window. Rear headrests can block a sizable chunk of this view, and some of our testers had issues clearing the rear window of fog, frost, and rain. The rear defroster took a long time to start making a difference, though the front defroster had no issues clearing the view in a reasonable amount of time.

The standard 360-degree surround view camera works well and helps somewhat at maneuvering around low-speed obstacles, but it’s not a replacement for being able to see out of the car.

The Leaf’s automatic windshield wipers in the front are tuned well, but Nissan doesn’t even offer a rear windshield wiper, even on the top Platinum+ trim.

Another visibility aid, the automatic high beams, worked well for the most part, recognizing low-light conditions with ease. However, they were a bit too eager to turn on the high beams at times, blinding oncoming traffic. At least they’re super simple to engage with the press of a button on the end of the lighting stalk.

In addition to the issues I had with the Leaf’s knee and leg room as a shorter driver, the passenger-side front seat is even worse, as the angled part of the firewall in the floor sits noticeably further back than it does on the driver’s side.The rear seats swap practicality for style, as headroom is compromised by the angled roof. The seatback sits fairly upright, and one tester felt as if the bottom cushion sits too low to the floor to give him adequate under-leg support. Foot space also felt somewhat squished.

Our issues with the Leaf’s form-over-function sloping roofline also include the height of the rear cargo area. Space overall has improved from the old model, with a Nissan-claimed 55.5 cubic feet of cargo space with the rear seats folded down, which allowed me to fit two 62.5-inch poles for a flattened shelving unit in the rear. I might have had a harder time if that shelving unit had been assembled, though, as you run out of vertical space thanks to the angle of the rear hatch.

There’s also no front trunk for more enclosed storage, as there is in some EVs. Small-item storage isn’t the best, either, with long, deep, and narrow door pockets that we found awkward to use, as well as a deep but short center console bin that seems less usable than it should be.

Not everything feels nicer than it should in America’s least expensive EV. Even in our loaned top-trim Platinum+ test car, the Leaf still has the occasional visible mold line in its plastic components and cheaper-feeling parts. Both the glove box and door pockets felt like a cost-cutting move, with rough edges. Our purchased SV+’s doors have more hard plastic across the inner door card that feels thin and hollow.

The Leaf also has some blue-speckled fabric trim along the dashboard and front door windowsills that feels under-padded and somewhat thin. We were also split when it comes to the pearlescent faux-leather accent color on the seats and trim, too. Some of CR’s test staff thought it was a cool, unique effect, while others felt the sheen made it look too fake.

What We'll Keep an Eye On

The top-of-the-line Platinum+ loaner had a cool interior, but certain materials made us wonder how well it would hold up over time. Both it and the SV+ we bought feature fabric trim that looks sort of like tweed, but isn’t nearly as thick, and, frankly, feels a bit flimsy. Nissan used this fabric on both the front windowsills and dashboard, and given how often you touch the top of your doors over the lifetime of a car, we have to wonder how long that fabric will hold up.

Likewise, the white seats in the Platinum+ were easy enough to wipe off when you spilled something, yet the outer bolster of the driver’s seat was already turning slightly blue from drivers’ jeans. How easy are these to clean and how well will the material hold up over time?

CR doesn’t have specific instrumented tests for durability, but we can at least see how these things wear over our ownership period.

One thing I noticed was that the loaded-up Platinum+ model we borrowed was fairly efficient compared to its EPA rating of 3.03 miles per kilowatt-hour of energy. Judging by the Nissan’s onboard trip computer, though, the Leaf may be capable of more. On a mostly-highway trip with an admittedly aggressive driver, I saw 2.5 miles per kWh. That tends to be the least efficient environment for EVs even with a gentler use of the accelerator pedal, as you don’t have to brake for stop lights and signs, and thus, you recover less energy from braking. In a wider mix of conditions, I even saw 4 miles per kWh.

Consumer Reports does its own, more controlled range tests for EVs under less-than-favorable conditions for hypermiling: a 100-mile highway loop driven at a constant 70 mph. So, we’ll definitely keep our eye on whether the Leaf can beat its EPA estimate.

Our testers were as split as the regenerative braking controls as to whether we liked them. There are four levels of regenerative braking force that you can adjust on the fly using paddles behind the steering wheel, plus the dedicated “e-Step” mode selectable with its own button on the dashboard. While it’s easy to paddle-shift your way though the four main levels, it seems like e-Step would make more sense as a fifth paddle-selectable level given that it isn’t a true one-pedal driving mode. While this system isn’t perfect, many of CR’s testers found that the Leaf’s default level of 2 (out of the 4 levels available through the paddles) let the car feel pretty natural to drive compared to a gas-powered vehicle while still offering some regenerative braking. While it’s understandable to not have a one-pedal mode in Japan, we’re curious as to whether they might give into demand elsewhere and upgrade e-Step in the future.

So far, most of our experience in the Leaf was in Nissan’s loaned, top-trim Platinum+, which notably points out that it’s an early-production prototype right on its window sticker. As with other software-heavy vehicles that accept updates, we’re curious about what might change over time. Will an over-the-air update improve its menu structure, or fix the lag in the system?

The Leaf is about to lose its title as the United States’ cheapest new EV, as Chevrolet is bringing back the Bolt for the 2027 model year with a starting price of just $27,600. That Bolt also now packs an SUV form factor, closely resembling the old Bolt EUV, and its more upright hatch makes it better suited for taller items than the Leaf. It’s also moving to General Motors’ Ultium EV platform. The new Bolt also offers GM’s impressive hands-free Super Cruise active driving assistance system, whereas the Leaf doesn’t even offer the option for one.

The one catch is that Chevrolet says the new Bolt is a limited-run model, and hasn’t said exactly how limited its time will be. It’s not the only contender around the Leaf’s price point, though. With the end of federal EV incentives, we’ve seen automakers try different sales strategies to keep their all-electric models selling, including some steep discounts. The Hyundai Kona EV’s $32,975 starting price isn’t much more than the Leaf’s—and is notably less than the Leaf SV+ we just bought—and we find its interior controls to be much easier to use. You could even look at slightly larger electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Equinox EV for roughly the price of a loaded-up Leaf as well.

Needless to say, this is a category we’ll be keeping our eyes on in the near future.