After a long wait, Nissan Philippines is finally launching the electric-powered LEAF. The long-awaited event is scheduled to take place on May 9, 2021, Sunday. The said launch event will be livestreamed on Nissan’s official Facebook page as well as on the company’s official YouTube page.
The Nissan LEAF (pictured UK version)
Nissan originally intended to launch the electric car model back in 2020. This in turn, was announced way back in 2019. That’s a good two years of waiting for the said model. Of note, this will be the second fully electric-powered car model from a major car manufacturer officially launched for the Philippine market after the Hyundai Ioniq EV. Suffice to say, this will be a groundbreaker for Nissan and it might hopefully set off a trend of introducing mass-market electric car models in the country.
As for the LEAF itself, it uses an electric drivetrain capable of delivering up to 148 horsepower and 320 Nm of torque. It isn’t Tesla fast, but it's certainly more powerful and torquier than most of the gasoline-powered Philippine-market compact car models. It also has a range of 311 kilometers thanks to its 40-kWh battery pack. With that kind of range, the Nissan-made EV could travel from Quezon City to Baguio City on a single charge.
The LEAF's well-arranged interior
With regards to charging, the EV in question can actually be plugged into a standard wall outlet. Through this, the vehicle can have a charging time of 12 to 15 hours. There is however, an optional fast charging wall box that cuts down charging time down to just seven hours. Hopefully, this will be made available upon launch as well.
Being an EV, one can expect that the upcoming Philippine-spec model is feature-rich. So just like the other markets that already have the LEAF, our version will hopefully come standard with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, pedestrian detection, lane departure warning, automatic rear emergency braking, rear cross-traffic alert, and blind-spot monitoring.
The 2nd-generation LEAF in general, is a good-looking hatch too
Are you excited about the Nissan LEAF? For more updates on this, keep reading here on Philkotse.com.