Can the Nissan Leaf really run 0-60 mph in 5 seconds? Not likely

If you happened to be watching CBS Evening News this past weekend, you might have noticed a story about electric vehicles with a focus on the upcoming Nissan Leaf. While most of the report was pretty innocuous and familiar to readers of this site – especially the interview with our friends from Plug In America – there was one little tidbit that caught some attention.

The story claimed that the Leaf could accelerate from 0-60 miles per hour in just five seconds. While Tesla has proven it is certainly possible to make a very fast electric car, we didn't recall Nissan ever making such claims about the Leaf. We checked with Nissan spokeswoman Katharine Zachary who confirmed that no acceleration numbers have ever been quoted for the Leaf. We haven't driven a production-spec Leaf, but Zachary suspects that the producers of the CBS story must have accidentally pulled the acceleration numbers for the 370Z. Check out the video of the CBS report after the jump. Hats off to Peter for the tip!

[Source: CBS, Nissan]

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