Nissan has unveiled the new (2026) Leaf, its EV that has been costing Nissan money since its introduction back in 2011. It has also unveiled the new price – $31,485 – which is higher than ever.
Somehow, Nissan thinks this will sell.
Apparently, because the new, less-affordable Leaf is said to be able to go 303 miles in between charges. This is double the range of the 2025 Leaf (with its standard battery pack) but the question Nissan seems not to have asked itself is whether range sells when the vehicle costs too much.
The base price of the ’26 Leaf is pretty close to the base price of a number of entry-luxury brand models such as the Audi A3 ($38,200), BMW 2 Series ($39,600) and Lexus NX ($40,965) – all of which by the way go farther than Nissan says the Leaf can go. The word is italicized to emphasize an important point. That being the fact that EV manufacturers – it’s not just Nissan – tout ranges that tend to be overly optimistic because they assume the EV is not driven “aggressively” (meaning avoid making more than occasional use of the rapid acceleration EV manufacturers like to tout) and that it is not very hot or very cold out, enabling the driver to get by without using the AC or the heat at full-blast. If it is very cold or very hot out and the driver does use the AC or the heat at full-blast or makes more than occasional use of the ability to accelerate rapidly, the actual driving range will be significantly less than advertised.
It is interesting to note here that EVs are not held to the same standard as vehicles that are propelled by engines. There have in fact been recalls (and class action lawsuits) over relatively minor not-measuring-up to what was advertised as regards miles-per-gallon. Hyundai, to cite one example, was taken to the woodshed over a disparity of about 5 MPG in advertised vs. actual driving range, a disparity of less than 10 percent. I have personally experienced disparities much greater than this in the course of test driving more than a dozen EVs made by various manufacturers. One of the most egregious disparities being the actual vs. touted driving range of the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup. Its driving range went down by half when it was cold out and I had a trailer hooked to it. The actual driving range of several Mercedes EVs also plummeted when I made us of the touted ability to accelerate rapidly.
Of course, one could avoid losing so much range so quickly by not accelerating quickly. But what would be the point of owning a Mercedes EV that had to be driven like a Yugo GV in order to able to drive it any appreciable distance? It is also far from the Luxury Car Experience to have to regularly spend time parked at a not-so-fast charger kiosk, waiting to get going again while other people just go about their business. This is why Mercedes is having to massively discount its “luxury” EVs in a desperate attempt to get rid of them, no matter what it costs Mercedes.
Interestingly, Nissan has had to resort to the same tactics to get rid of Leafs – even though the last-generation Leaf was the most “affordable” EV available in this country. Apparently, Nissan believes it’s the range that’s the problem and so endowed the 2026 iteration with more of that. It is certainly part of the problem. But would it be as much of a problem if the Leaf cost say $15,000?
Probably not – because the affordability would compensate for the car’s deficits. Have you ever stayed at a cheap motel? Why did you stay there? No doubt it wasn’t because of the great room service or the luxurious amenities. You stayed there because it was a cheap place to sleep – and that compensated for not having the amenities you’d have had to pay more for at a fancier hotel.
How about a bag of rice that can feed the family for a month vs. steak that feeds it for one night?
It’s a simple but increasingly forgotten concept. One that the Japanese car brands especially used to live by. Honda, Toyota and Datsun (Nissan now) built their brands from literally nothing – in this country – to major players by offering a lot of value for less money. Remember those old Nobody Demands More From a Datsun Than Datsun ads? What happened to that company?
It became a company that somehow thinks it can sell less for $31,485.
. . .
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I didn’t need to read this article, only the title. You had me at, “How Did $31,485 Become “Affordable”?”
…What else, really, is there to say?
We are ruled by monsters, & most corporations are ruled by minions of the monsters. Total, fuckery afoot. A.k.a. they are all bastards set to ruin everyone.
“But what would be the point of owning a Mercedes EV that had to be driven like a Yugo GV in order to able to drive it any appreciable distance?”
Why Eric; to save the planet, of course! /s
And yet, one of the top rated most unreliable vehicles include Nissan. I have never owned or driven one, and certainly not an EV. Never mind the EV aspects. Can someone enlighten me as to why Nissan in general rates so low?
I think what happened to Datsun was a French company bought them out(Renault) comes to mind. Very un Japanese, the French Could fuck up a wet dream. My brother had a small truck that had a diesel motor back in the 80s It was a Datsun used on a rural mail delivery job. Affordable and reliable. Good luck with the gout, it is caused by some acid your ingest, tea and beer are the problem.
Gout?!? Sparkey is the gout expert. It’s a drag for sure, did the prednisone treatment several times over the last 20 years to kick it. I’m on Uloric (febuxostat) keeps it damped down. Yeah I don’t like long term meds but diet mods and no booze (!!!) really didn’t fix it. Where’s my bourbon.
If beer is the problem then I guess ill just suffer from gout.
How desperate are EeeVee peddlers, as the clock ticks toward midnight on the ‘Biden’ $7,500 tax credit?
‘In July, Mercedes dealerships were leasing the EQB for $352 a month, including the down payment, making it more affordable than nearly every other car in the country, according to Edmunds.com. In fact, on a list of cheapest leases, the EQB is third, one of five EVs parked in the top 10 slots.
‘Car companies are offering screaming deals on battery-powered machines in a push to lock in loyal customers before losing federal tax credits of up to $7,500 per transaction at the end of September.
‘For auto executives, leases of 24 or 36 months offer a convenient way to move vehicles without cutting sticker prices. Dealers can also bake federal, state and local incentives into the lease deal.
‘Hyundai is offering its Ioniq 5 for $260 a month after the down payment, while Volkswagen’s ID.4 can be had for just $4 more. Honda has gone a step further with a streamlined offer on the Prologue, its first EV: $4,800 for 24 months — $200 a month.
‘Some local dealers are going a step further. Emich VW in Boulder, Colo., which has a clock on its website counting down the seconds until the federal EV tax credits end, is advertising the ID.4 for $39 a month.‘ — LA Times
https://archive.ph/3i5Am#selection-2831.0-2855.211
Thirty-nine dollahs a month? Might be some nasty trick with open-end leasing and residual value here. But it just goes to show that, as people said in Henry Ford’s day, EeeVees are ‘a drug on the market.’ What a shame that Lightning Jim Farley got Ford into this awful bind, as he ups the ante by another $5 billion on his EeeVee Hail Mary pass.
Do you feel lucky, punk?
With the sugar high this end of subsidy flurry of EV ‘sales’ is sure to bring on, the auto makers will envision themselves geniuses. They’ll convince each other that EVs are what MAGA craves. Expect them to double down when they see Aug-Oct figures on EVs out the door. The loses will surly be made up on volume.
I cant tell if the corporate knuckleheads in charge of these companies are stupid because time spent at college, or, time spent hanging out at the ole corporate glory hole. Either way, if I was a stockholder in any of these shit globalist companies, I’d work like a dog to make their stupidity painfully actionable.
I will never own a car with a 52” screen bolted to the dashboard.
It’s 2025, they should have seen the writing on the wall and just dropped it by now.
Can’t wait until the end of September, watch the leaf tank completely
$31,485 would be affordable if it was a (very) modest house, not a vehicle you will be lucky to get ten years out of it.
For less than a Leaf, you could be riding in style in a Powder Blue Satellite:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1966-plymouth-satellite-19/
And at 16mpg you could buy 100000 miles worth of $3 gas for the difference.
An interesting statistic is that $31,485 in 2025 funny money is $3,221 in 1966 (pre-Nixon complete unshackling) money.
In 1966 that Satellite would have been $2,695 base price with the 273 V8. The Torqueflite added $206 to the price and the 361 probably added about $500 to that. That BaT Satellite would have therefore been I’d suppose about $3,400 new.
If you put aside that the LEAF is an eeeevvvvv and just look at the inflation aspect $31,485 is pretty much low to middle end for a car now. Consider that in 1966 the base Satellite was just a car your grandma would use to get groceries or your mom would pick you up from school. The mid century version of a boring device, so it actually kind of works as a comparison.
It could be optioned into a pretty rad car, so there’s a HUGE argument to be made that manufacturers and regulations have sucked every drop of fun and romance out of cars. Absolutely true.
Where it gets out of whack is average salary and home prices and all that. To cite an example, in 1966 the average manufacturing worker would have made about $4,700 per year and the average home price was $22,800. Those numbers moved to 2025 money are $47,746 and $231,619 . The official calculated (so heavily fudged) are something like $60,300 and $512,800. The house number is somewhat skewed because houses now are almost doubled in size McMansions, so price per square foot will be somewhat slightly less insane.
Damn, I want that powder blue Satellite.
The people pushing the EV garbage are deluded. The top brass at Nissan must have no stake in the stock of the company or very little. If it were their money at risk, would they still be pushing this or would the Leaf been dropped years ago?
Because the carefully scripted/wardrobed Girl Boss says that the price point is affordable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJcWC7TBZo
Nissan used to have Brie shilling their vehicles using “Empowerment”, but Brie’s career imploded with “The Marvels”.
I still believe Nissan gave Disney money to get that flick out the door and into theaters.
Yep. Just like the Girl Boss from Wharton who said that putting a tranny on a Bud Light can would sell.
I work at a Can-am dealership. We have three of the electric motorcycles they make. They are FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS each (I think one of them is almost $16k)
They have been there all year. NONE have sold. There is ZERO interest in them. None. But… corporate sent them to the dealerships…
That video is amazing for its insight, build simpler vehicles, and its lack of self-awareness in addressing that. The Hi-Lux does that at half the cost and none of the EV hassle.
They, like so many others, have had their common sense educated out of them.
The name of this pathetic, slow-charging dEVice, “LEAF”, is actually an acronym – it’s a “Leading Electric Affordable Family” car. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that this is true.
My anecdotal evidence: The Pilot south of me has a charging stations. Oh it looks like a gas station –the big awning, lotsa “pumps” and on. I drive by it twice a day and have done so for several years. Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen anyone plugged into a charging station. Not sure how they spend their time while waiting. There’s only so much to see & do at a truck stop after all.
Even the truck stop angels shun the EeeVee pumps. 🙁
If only they would dim the lights for the lot lizards… or provide private rooms while charging.
Not sure how they spend their time while waiting.
EV zealots tend to be obsessed with preemptively telling people what they themselves do during charging. Apparently, doing certain things during charging (such as sleeping, eating, having meals or toilet breaks) somehow makes the wait go away, or at least that’s what their magical thinking tells them.
Pilot/Flying-J is a wholly owned racket of the Geico Gecko’s.
Capo Gecko cut a deal with GM and the Federal Government to install and maintain the charging stations at taxpayer expense. Whether or not anyone uses them is, for now, irrelevant to the Lizard.
Prior to Buffett’s retirement announcement, reading between the lines on the recent annual reports, I believe the long-term plan was to use the insurance float to position Pilot/Flying-J to take on Buc-ee’s, but now i’m not so sure.
Buc-ee’s is another ward of the State thanks to tax breaks and incentive deals which are always involved with their new stores, but Buc-ee’s always made a point of not being a truck stop, with 18 wheelers banned from the property except for the delivery trucks.
‘Somehow, Nissan thinks this will sell.’ — eric
What happened to the dashboard? [Second photo from the top.]
It looks like half a dozen burnt Pop-Tarts just blasted out of the otherwise featureless gray shelf below the windshield — and, in nightmare fashion, with writing on them. Aaaaiiiieeeee! Make it stop!!
This is a brazen aesthetic assault, with malice aforethought: uglier than sin. Take it away, before I barf breakfast on it and then calmly amble out of the showroom, having left my chunky ‘deposit’ in the vehicle.
Hi Jim.
It looks to me that all the controls in that Leaf are now controlled through the touchscream. It makes you wonder why they do this as trying to find the appropriate sub menu for the fan is probably is as “unsafe” as playing with your is when driving.
As for affordability nothing is affordable anymore.
Hi Landru,
I think they do it – touchscreen controls/displays – because it’s cheap to install and expensive to replace. It also is part of the gradual conditioning of people to accept being controlled by apps.
Hi Eric.
Almost everyone says that irritating slogan “Safety First”; based on just that an obviously unsafe user interface should have gone the way of the Dodo bird and been replaced with a safer interface. Newer and flashier does not necessarily mean better.
It’s only an interim step, the head wearable rightgoodthinkband will monitor your thoughts, and adjust the fan if you think it’s too low, (but only if the increased power consumption of the fan is within allowable federal guidelines). It will also guard against badthink and evilacts by summoning enforcement heroes if you think ungood or doubleplusungood thoughts about your wonderful masters and benevolent benefactors.
For your badthink in badspeaking about the pop tart consumer interface you are hereby demerited one months UBI and prohibited from purchasing anything but bread and water and allowed to travel only to and from your job. Your social credit score has been adjusted down to 369.
Have a doubleplusgood day!
Hi Ernie.
WooHoo!!!!!! That social credit score of 389 is the highest it’s been in years. Sadly it will be lowered even more when they discover that I eat and enjoy meat. The playing with loud toys probably doesn’t help either