NEW LEAF vs RIVALS

BACK IN THE DOCK

The Nissan Leaf is starting out again – but the competition is way fiercer this time round. VICKY PARROTT brings the reinvented EV pioneer and two rivals to trial

PHOTOGRAPHY JACK HARRISON

A lot happened in 2010: a volcano erupted; Apple launched the first iPad; Lady Gaga wore a meat dress. It was all going on.

I had a few memorable moments myself, even if I didn’t wear any bacon, get stranded due to Iceland’s geological exuberance or buy one of those newfangled touchscreen laptops that didn’t have a keyboard. They will never catch on… Anyway, Milton Keynes was the backdrop to one of my most striking memories of that year. Amid the roundabouts and glassy frontages, I walked into a shopping centre to be greeted by a cheerfully bug-eyed, blobby Nissan. Here began the world’s acquaintance with the electric car. Complete with a heady official range of 124 miles from a 24kWh battery and charging speeds of up to 46kW (if you could find a vanishingly rare DC car charger), the Mk1 Nissan Leaf was the first mainstream, massmanufactured EV. It was an oddity that went on to change the automotive world.

Fast forward 15 years and here I am, on a windswept corner of northern Denmark, contemplating the all-new Mk3 Leaf against the backdrop of a UK electric car fleet of 1.6 million and a global electric car fleet of some 60 million.

Clearly, the new Leaf has a very different job to do in 2025 than the original did in 2010. Top of its to-do list is to persuade buyers that it’s better than the other two cars here with us: the Kia EV4 and the Skoda Elroq.

While these cars are all new this year, and deliveries of the Leaf won’t even begin until 2026, the Elroq has already established itself as the one to beat in the C-segment EV class. We gave it a four-and-a-half-star road test verdict for “having no compromise on efficiency, range, drivability or ride comfort”.

Elroq is practical up front, in the second row and in the boot. Classic Skoda

The EV4 and the Leaf have their work cut out, then, but they’re off to a good start, given that both improve on the Elroq 85’s official range of 349 miles. The EV4 manages up to 362 miles, according to the WLTP test cycle, while at 375 miles the Leaf has the longest range of the three, despite having the smallest usable battery capacity.