Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
Michael Liebreich and I have enjoyed meals, interviews, and EV adventures together a handful of times over the years. We connected really well from the start and had great chats together. So, it’s a little unsurprising that we are both in love with essentially the same story right now.
I know Michael obsessively follows cleantech news, and I am in charge of making sure we publish about 90 stories a week on cleantech or related matters. So, we are in the habit of seeing and sharing big cleantech stories. But then once in a while, something really jumps out from the crowd.
Nissan recently unveiled the all-new 2026 Nissan LEAF. It’s another great option on the electric car market. But it’s also much more than that. Paul Fosse wrote a great article on how much the Nissan LEAF has improved over the past 15 years, so I didn’t do a piece on that myself, but it’s one of the most interesting and exciting stories of the year for me. When Tesla released the lower-cost Model Y and Model 3, though, I took the opportunity to write about the quiet revolution that has been going on. It’s really not about any of these models, but about how battery cost has been dropping and batteries have been improving. It’s about how far we’ve come in the past decade and a half, but it’s also about where we’re headed.
So, back to Michael. He recently posted a very short article on Substack, “My favourite slide.” The brief intro to it was: “I’m sitting in the back of a board meeting in Valencia, shuffling charts for an upcoming keynote, and thought I would share my favourite slide of the moment…” Here’s the slide:
It’s a great slide. It shows that the power capacity of the Nissan LEAF has doubled since its inception, the battery capacity has more than tripled, the charging capacity has more than tripled, the range has increased 4 times over, and … the cost has dropped by about 33%.
That’s wild.
Naturally, Michael had to take the next step forward, too. He puts out a forecast of where the Nissan LEAF could be in another 15 years (or 14 years). Could we have a Nissan LEAF with 500 miles of range with 375 kW fast charging at a cost of just $25,000? Why not?
In short, the revolution is just getting started.
Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
