Yahoo Autos This Wild Nissan Leaf Race Car Looks Cooler Than Any Nissan EV Has a Right to
Nissan has announced that it will build a Leaf that can zip to 60 mph as fast as a Tesla Model 3 and packs more carbon fiber than a BMW i3. You can't buy it and may never see one, yet, unlike the first Leaf NISMO RC from 2011, a version of this powertrain most surely will mosey into a showroom in the next few years.
Forget for a moment the wing, detachable body panels, and fixed plastic windows that press the NISMO RC into the mold of a Global Rallycross race car. The 40.0-kWh lithium-ion battery is stock and presumably air cooled as on the production Leaf. The twin electric motors, one on each axle, together shove 322 hp and 472 lb-ft of torque to all four wheels. Unlike Honda and Toyota, Nissan doesn't yet sell an electric car with all-wheel drive. While Tesla's D models and supercars such as the Acura NSX have similar capabilities, such motor arrangements needn’t be prohibitively expensive for a mass-market car (witness the new Prius AWD-e). So by 2022, when Nissan says it will have launched eight new EVs-whether brand-new models or retrofits of existing cars-the NISMO RC's motors and torque-vectoring control will most certainly appear in more conventional wrappers.
The 2018 Leaf we tested reached 60 mph in 7.4 seconds, which is a few lifetimes ahead of the Toyota Prius. Nissan claims this raciest Leaf can hit 62 mph at least three seconds quicker. A full carbon-fiber monocoque shell helps shave 800 pounds off a normal Leaf, to an estimated 2690 pounds. That's 622 pounds heavier than the first rear-wheel-drive NISMO RC, which also had its battery pack mounted amidships for improved handling. But when we lapped that experimental car, its meager 107 hp and 207 lb-ft couldn't provoke a slide or much thrust on corner exits. That shouldn't be a problem with this new RC.
Nissan is building six demo cars to parade them at Formula E races and other company events. Right now, the Leaf NISMO-the closest thing to a high-performance Nissan EV-is on sale in Japan with factory summer tires and upgrades to the suspension, brakes, and other components. We'll need to wait much longer to be impressed by a genuine NISMO electric car, but if the NISMO RC is any indication, an all-wheel-drive Nissan EV should be an easy add.
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