Nissan’s bigger-battery BEV—the 2019 Leaf Plus review

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  The Nissan Leaf Plus starts at $36,550. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

Electric vehicles are the future of driving, even if it might take us a few more decades to get there. They were also the past of driving; early automobiles, as often as not, ran on battery power, and even Henry Ford’s wife eschewed one of his creations for a more sophisticated European-made EV. It’s just that right now, EVs aren’t really the present of driving. I’m sure global EV sales will set another new record for year-on-year growth, but 2018’s banner year still represented just 2.1% of global light-passenger vehicle sales.

Of course, people can only buy electric cars if someone builds them. And it has taken a combination of draconian European carbon fines and diesel’s utter disgrace for the world’s biggest car makers to truly catch that religion. But there were some early converts. Like the charismatic car company CEO who bet big on mass-produced EVs and lithium-ion batteries, earning a description from Wired as “either a brilliant visionary or crazy as a loon.”

No, not that one, although I did discover that quote reading Edward Niedermeyer’s forthcoming book on Tesla. I am referring to Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of Nissan and Renault, who wanted his companies building a half-million EVs a year—back in 2013. Obviously, that plan didn’t quite work out, but Nissan sold almost 300,000 Leafs (Leaves?) by the time the second-generation Leaf went on sale in 2017.