The Nissan Leaf electric car is notable for many things, but performance isn't one of them. So how is it possible that Nissan's motorsports division could make an electric race car from the same components as the production Leaf? We take to the track in the Nissan Leaf Nismo RC to find out.
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BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Welcome to Translogic, I'm Bradley Hasemeyer. We've all seen the Nissan Leaf in the wild. Silently taking people to and from work. Running errands, maybe dropping the kids off at school. But today, we're finding a Leaf that actually is wild. I present to you the Nissan Leaf Nismo RC. Yeah, it's a race car.
All right ladies and gentlemen, here we are in the Nissan Leaf Nismo RC. There we go. So that's going to get us up to 60 miles an hour in 6.8 seconds. That doesn't sound very fast, but with 100% torque off the line, it feels like I am moving. This car is insanely balanced. As I'm taking corners there's none of this. Just stays flat and grounded. Look at that, oh. It just wants to it wants me to challenge it. And I'm up for the challenge. All right so we're here with Miyatani, the president of Nismo. Thank you so much for being with us.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Thank you.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: All right, let's get right into it. Nismo, tell me a little bit about what you guys do and how you fit into Nissan.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Nismo is the abbreviation of Nissan Motorsports International Limited. When Nissan introduced Leaf, and Nissan tries to claim, Nissan is the zero emission leader. And we thought it would be a nice idea to have the racing car of the Leaf.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: You got a Leaf, you brought it into your engineering lab, and then what are some of the changes that you guys made?
SHOICHI MIYATANI: The layout of the battery changed. And from front to wheel drive. And do we make it very light with usage of the carbon fiber. However, when we do it, you have to keep the original production battery motor inverter. Otherwise you use another component. And it could be another thing.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Sure it could be a totally different car.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Yeah. The maximum speed is 150 kilo. Which is exactly the same as the normal Leaf. But the curve to reach that point is much quicker.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Much quicker. Yeah, OK.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Usually the race speed of 150 kilos, then about 20 minutes the battery would last.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: So obviously if you guys were going to get into some kind of racing league, or start racing with this car, you would have to do some kind of battery swap.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: If we want to do it 30 minutes, 40 minutes, then what are we going to do? Probably we're going to change the car itself. And also we probably put some additional batteries.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: OK, so extra batteries.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Some additional battery, but the battery itself is the same as the normal Leaf.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Look at that. I feel like I'm in a speeder bike or something. You get more of a 50-50 weight balance. You can really sense that in these back and forth, these S-curves, and other the quick chicane in the left and right. You know the number of times that I've been able to drive electric vehicles, especially sport style EVs. I thought, man, I really miss that engine sound. And I do, I love the engine sound. But I'm really starting to like this kind of [ACCELERATING NOISE] sound. I don't know, it's really growing on me. I didn't think that was going to be the case. There's tons of carbon fiber. And I gotta say, it looks great.
Not only does it make it lighter and stronger, but you feel like, I am in an actual race car. This was at Le Mans?
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Yeah.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Where else has it raced? In Europe, in China, and Japan. And also, in Japan, we did a real race against other EV cars. Like Tesla.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Oh interesting.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: And we won.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: And you won? All right, a little subtle jab there. OK, I see that. What do you guys have coming up next?
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Zeod RC. Zeod RC, zero emission on demand racing car. Which was unveiled at Le Mans this year. We announced that this guy is going to run next year's Le Mans from Garage 56.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: And Garage 56 is kind of an experimental category, right? It allows for people to be on the track that aren't, maybe, in the GT3 class or something like that.
SHOICHI MIYATANI: But this car, with a speed of about 300 kilometers per hour.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: So twice--
SHOICHI MIYATANI: Electric mode. Which would be faster than the GTE category.
BRADLEY HASEMEYER: Really? Oh that's going to ruffle some feathers. So another difference between this and your traditional buying off the lot Leaf, is that this thing is 1,200 pounds lighter. Yes, and that has a lot to do with the carbon fiber monocoque. Also has a lot to do with the fact that there's no seats in the back. There's no amenities, no cup holders, no nav screen. This thing will run at full tilt, which is 93 miles an hour, for about 20 minutes. So that's enough to get away from the cops for most of the time.
They also changed the car, gave it a limited slip diff. Which helps with the rear wheel drive performance. And keeping the car on the track. Which is where I like it. OK so this is awesome. But what's super impressive, is how the guts of this are essentially a production Leaf. And, sure, maybe this thing's not going to be winning any races anytime soon. But what's exciting is what's to come. For Translogic I'm Bradley Hasemeyer. See you next time.
