Turning over a new Leaf (From The Northern Echo)

Turning over a new Leaf

9:44am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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Apart from a few refinements, the engine in your car is not so different from the design originally patented by Daimler and Maybach 125 years ago. But Nissan’s Leaf is about to change all that, and the North-East is at the forefront of the revolution.

Motoring Editor Nigel Burton reports.

AT first glance, the Nissan Leaf doesn’t look like the car that’s about to press the reset button on 125 years of perceived wisdom.

With its rounded lines and inoffensive looks, it could be just about any anonymous mid-sized Japanese hatchback from the past three or four years.

Until, that is, it glides silently past and you realise that the Leaf is a mass-market motor like no other. It is the world’s first affordable zero emissions passenger car.

The Leaf’s low profile is deliberate. Shiro Nakamura, Nissan’s senior vice-president and chief creative officer, who oversaw the project, admits the car is unique but says that he did not want it to look so bizarre as to be off-putting.

He said: “From the beginning, we did not want to make the Leaf very strange, because one of the perceptions of the electric vehicle is that people think they are toys, or cheap... that you cannot drive at high speed, that electric vehicle means ‘not a real car’.

“But the car we have is a real car – you can drive it 140km, you can seat four or five passengers comfortably.”

On this basis, the Leaf is a success. It seats five adults – and their luggage – in comfort – and doesn’t resort to unusual visual tricks such as faired-in wheels to boost the aerodymanics (even if a lot of aero work is going on beneath the bodywork and the smooth face hides a couple of plug-in charging points).

While Toyota and Honda have grabbed all the headlines with their petrol-electric hybrids, Nissan has been quietly beavering away on its battery technology since 1996.

Nissan president Carlos Ghosn is an electric evangelist who believes hybrids like the Prius are distractions – driving up an automotive culde- sac because they still need petrol – on the goal to an all-electric vehicle.

He knows a radical switch will not happen overnight, but is confident that within ten years, one in ten vehicles will be a plug-in car.

Ghosn speaks a basic truth when he says: “How are you going to have two billion cars on earth and reduce emissions? You can’t, unless (you have) electric vehicles.”

The Leaf, a four-door electric car that offers a range of 100 miles, a top speed of 87 mph and an overnight recharge time from an ordinary domestic socket, is Nissan’s response to Ghosn’s challenge.

The 100-mile range was crucial. Nissan found that 95 per cent of the world’s driving population covers less than 60 miles a day.

Power is provided by 48 lithium ion battery modules. More importantly, Nissan has designed the batteries with smart-charging in mind. They can be hooked up to 50KW AC charging points which can take the Leaf from flat to 80 per cent capacity in half an hour.

In a bid to secure the Leaf for Sunderland, regional development agency One North East has already committed itself to introducing hundreds of charging points over the next year.

The aim is to create 619 public charging points across the region by January. Every car will be fitted with a computer linked to a GPS satellite system and global data centre, allowing the Leaf to display the nearest power point.

MARGARET FAY, chairwoman of One North East, is convinced renewable energy technology such as this offers the best chance for the region to regain manufacturing momentum. She sees the Leaf as the first in a new wave of developments that could be as important as ship-building, steel-making and coal once were.

She said the region was now poised to become a leading global location for ultra-low carbon vehicles, adding: “The importance of Nissan’s commitment to the North-East cannot be overstated.

Nissan is playing a critical role in making the North-East the most attractive place in Europe to develop electric vehicles.”

The Sunderland plant has been in pole position to win the Leaf contract ever since Nissan chose it as the site for a European battery manufacturing plant last year.

The factory’s legendary productivity and flexibility (it has been the most productive car plant in Europe every year since 1998) made it an obvious choice, despite intense lobbying by the French and Spanish governments for the Leaf to be built at their car plants.

Sunderland won’t be the only Leaf manufacturing facility. Production is already under way at a factory in Oppama, Japan, and Smyrna, Tennesse. The Japanese plant can turn out 50,000 models and the US factory will be able to produce a further 150,000. If the car is a hit, Sunderland will be able to quickly increase production to meet demand.

The North-East plant will also be well placed to compete for future electric vehicles.

The Leaf goes on sale in Japan later this year.

It is expected to cost about £28,000. With a £5,000 Government subsidy on offer in the UK, the sticker price over here should be about £25,000, meaning the Leaf will be marginally more expensive than its conventional petrol-powered rivals, but not cripplingly so.

The Leaf isn’t the end of Nissan’s electrical ambitions, but the beginning. Ghosn has committed to offering a full range of electric cars as soon as possible.

“We’re not coming out with one electric vehicle,”

he says.

“We’re coming out with a product line.”