Nissan Land Glider, Leaf, Roox star at Tokyo

By Tim Pollard

First Official Pictures

08 October 2009 09:30

Nissan will show off a range of electric cars at the 2009 Tokyo motor show, kicking off in a few weeks' time. The Leaf, which was unveiled earlier this summer, will receive its world show debut but this is the first time we've seen the new Nissan Land Glider – a narrow electric vehicle concept that leans into corners.

The Land Glider is an urban transport solution, Nissan's take on how we could whizz around town in a decade's time. It has a cigar-thin body with room for just one passenger and Nissan says its width will reduce congestion and make it easy to park. And just check out the way it leans into corners like a motorbike.

There's a bit of a race on for the first real electric cars, isn't there?

Oh yes. And Nissan claims the Leaf is the world's first large-scale volume EV. It's based on an unusually conventional five-door, five-seat hatchback bodystyle, designed not to scare off early adopters.

The Leaf has a range of more than 100 miles on one charge and NIssan's spent a lot of time thinking about the big picture of EVs. Where will you charge the car? The sat-nav guides you in. Will I make it home? The car maps your range onto the map in a bid to remove 'range anxiety'.

And the other Nissan stars at Tokyo are...

• The Nissan Qazana, which we saw at the 2009 Geneva show. It's a shrunken Qashqai and is set to be built at the UK's Sunderland plant from 2010. We'll see the production car at the Swiss show in 2010.

• The Nissan Roox, a mini MPV that'll be launched in Japan in late 2009. It's a classic Japanese tallboy hatch, with 1365mm of headroom and a 2085mm-long luggage bay, while sliding doors aid accessibility further.

• The Nissan NV200 Vanette Universal Design Taxi – bound for a cabby rank by the end of 2010. Your taxi driver will never again tut-tut when you come back with too much shopping for his boot.

• A range of tech solutions, including Nissan's new CVT auto transmission. Dubbed XTronic CVT, it's a smaller and lighter continuously variable transmission with 30% less friction than the existing 'box and 'the world-best change gear ratio of 7.3, which is more than 20% better compared to conventional CVT of the same class.' That might be the case, but we suspect it'll stir whirrrr like a washing machine when you step on the gas!

By Tim Pollard