Business Travel Packed with Value: Business owners can enjoy enhanced benefits with the Southwest Rapid Rewards® Business Credit Cards from Chase. Enjoy more choice, value, flexibility, and comfort when flying Southwest® for business travel. Learn more here.
The pioneering Nissan Leaf EV is back with a new look, upgraded tech, and improved battery range—and a lower price tag than when it debuted 15 years ago.
The third-generation version of the Leaf goes on sale this fall with a suggested retail price of $29,990 (the 2011 model started at $32,770). With this latest version of the car that became the first contemporary mass-market EV, Nissan aims to deliver a ride that’s “great to look at, fun to drive, and easy to live with,” according to the Japanese automaker.
“We got a lot of lessons learned from 15 years of being out in the market,” Jeff Tessmer, senior manager of EV technologies at Nissan, said during a media briefing in suburban Detroit in September. “And so our goal was really, how do we make this easy to live with?”
All about the charge: Several of the answers to that question have to do with charging.
For one thing, the engineers and planners behind the Leaf opted to equip the vehicle with two charging ports to reflect the reality of EV charging in the US today: the passenger side has a native NACS port to facilitate public charging at Tesla Supercharger stations, while the driver’s side has a J1772 AC charger. Eventually, the vehicle—like the EV sector—will move to a single NACS port.
According to Nissan, the new Leaf’s battery can go from a 10% charge to 80% in as little as 35 minutes. And it has bidirectional charging capabilities that enable the vehicle’s battery to power external devices.
Installing two different charging ports on the vehicle came with engineering and cost challenges, Tessmer said, but ultimately the team decided it was worth it so customers didn’t have to worry about buying adapters.
“This is a little bit more of a costly solution,” he said. “But it gives a customer that ability to just get in the vehicle and go.”
The 2026 Leaf’s 75 kilowatt-hour battery delivers an estimated range of 303 miles on the base model, about double what the second-generation offered.
New tech features inside the vehicle can help optimize route planning to make charging as easy as possible. The public charging experience is moving entirely onto Nissan’s app so drivers don’t have to shuffle between various charging network apps, and the new Leaf will be the first of Nissan’s EVs to launch with Plug and Charge capabilities.
“That gives the customer the ability to simply pull up to a charger, plug in, and all the communication happens on the back end—no need to open your app or start it through the screen,” Tessmer explained.
Ch-ch-changes: The 2026 model (which will be imported) debuts in a crossover style, with a redesigned silhouette featuring a wider stance and shorter profile, flush door handles, more cargo space, an active thermal management system, driver-assistance features like adaptive cruise control and blind-spot warning, and built-in Google integration. It comes in three different trim levels, with the highest-level starting at $38,990.
The launch comes at a tricky time for the EV sector in the US. Tax credits of up to $7,500 on qualifying electric models expired at the end of September, and sales are widely expected to fall after a rush to lock in purchases before the credits went away.
Even so, the Leaf’s sub-$30,000 price tag sets it apart in the US EV sector.
“Its biggest selling point is its price,” Edmunds said in its review. “It handily undercuts everything else in its class, including the previous value leader, the Chevy Equinox EV.”