2024 Nissan Leaf

The SV PLUS is scored as the representative configuration, matching how the 2026 Leaf is scored on its larger pack; its 160 kW AC synchronous motor makes 214 hp, healthy for a compact hatchback but well short of the hot-hatch and luxury-liftback end of the segment band.

250 lb-ft is above the compact-hatchback norm and, as on any EV, arrives from zero rpm, which is why the Leaf feels stronger off the line than its horsepower figure suggests.

Two independent tests bracket the SV PLUS at 6.7–6.8 s, mid-pack for the segment — quicker than a Prius or Corolla Hatchback, nowhere near the GR Corolla or Type R.

Single-motor EV delivery is quiet, immediate and completely free of lag or shift interruption, and reviewers describe the SV PLUS's torque as arriving across a wide band with no wheel spin. Two things keep it below the top band: the passively air-cooled pack lets output soften after repeated hard use or a hot/low-charge battery, and the e-Pedal Step regen calibration takes acclimatization.

A single-speed gear reducer has no shifts to get wrong — delivery is seamless from rest to highway speed with no hunting, drone or downshift harshness, which is the best outcome this item measures. It scores just short of the ceiling because there is no manual-mode or driver-selectable ratio dimension to reward, and the regen/e-Pedal handoff to friction braking is the one place the calibration is noticeable.

The 2024 Leaf is front-wheel drive on both trims with no AWD offered at any price — the bottom of this item's range. Nissan's e-4ORCE dual-motor system was reserved for the Ariya and never fitted to this generation of Leaf.

One powertrain type — battery-electric, front-drive, single-speed — offered in two outputs (110 kW/40 kWh and 160 kW/60 kWh). That is a meaningful choice of power and range but not distinct powertrains, so it sits in the upper part of the single-powertrain band rather than the two-or-three-choices band.

109 MPGe is respectable for an EV but no longer class-leading — the Leaf's efficiency advantage comes from its light weight and small frontal area rather than any modern drivetrain hardware, and it gives some of that back to the older, less efficient motor and inverter.

As on every EV the city cycle is the Leaf's strongest, helped by e-Pedal Step regenerative braking recovering stop-and-go energy — but 121 MPGe is mid-band against EVs that clear 140 in town.

Highway efficiency drops well below city, the usual EV pattern, and the second-generation Leaf's tall hatchback body and 2010s aerodynamics leave it behind the slipperier EVs now setting the highway band.

212 miles is the Leaf's defining weakness in 2024 — below the bottom of the EV band, and the base S at 149 miles is worse still. The passively air-cooled pack also loses more range than a liquid-cooled rival in cold weather, so the winter figure sits under the label.

Nissan's own figure for the SV PLUS is 100 kW, but the number overstates what an owner actually gets: the Leaf is the last US EV on the CHAdeMO connector, US CHAdeMO stations are almost all 50 kW and are being decommissioned, and with no active battery cooling the rate tapers hard on repeated or warm-battery sessions. The spec value is the manufacturer rating as the item requires; the practical caveat is reflected at 2.3.2.

Nissan's own best-case quote of 45 minutes to 80% is at the slow end of the band, and the realistic US figure is the 60-minute 50-kW number because almost no 100-kW CHAdeMO chargers exist. Either way this is roughly double what a modern 800-volt EV needs.

Cheap to run in absolute terms — roughly a third of what a comparable gas hatchback costs to fuel — though within the EV field the most efficient cars dip below $500/yr on the same assumptions.

Energy is cheap ($700/yr) and an owner with a 240-V outlet charges overnight without thinking about it, which is the best case this item rewards. But the Leaf's public-charging story is genuinely compromised in a way most EVs' is not: it is the last US car on CHAdeMO, a connector no other manufacturer still fits and whose station count is shrinking rather than growing, it has no NACS/Tesla Supercharger access, and the 6.6-kW onboard charger needs about 11 hours for a full home charge on the SV PLUS. That makes it practical only for a buyer who charges at home and rarely leaves town.

NHTSA's own 2024 NCAP result for the Leaf is a 5-star overall Vehicle Score, built on 5 stars in every side measure (barrier and pole, front and rear seat) offset by 4 stars in frontal impact and 4 stars for rollover. The low, heavy floor-mounted battery pack is what holds the rollover possibility to 10.7% and keeps the side results perfect.

The Leaf has never earned a Top Safety Pick of any level, and the bigger problem is how little of it IIHS has actually tested: there is no small overlap front rating for either side, no roof strength rating and no updated moderate overlap rating for this generation. The two crashworthiness results that do exist were both run by Nissan, not by IIHS, and the updated side test returned only Acceptable with the structure and safety cage graded Marginal.

Nissan Safety Shield 360 is standard on both 2024 trims — automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, blind spot warning, rear cross traffic alert, lane departure warning, high beam assist and rear automatic braking — which is unusually complete for a sub-$30k car, and the SV PLUS volume trim adds ProPILOT Assist so the scored configuration has adaptive cruise and lane centering as well. Held out of the top band because the base S has no adaptive cruise or lane centering at any price and there is no safe-exit alert anywhere in the range.

AEB with pedestrian detection is standard on every trim and rear automatic braking is too, which is real content most rivals charge for — but IIHS never ran a front crash prevention test on this generation, so none of it is verified, and the forward radar/camera hardware dates to the 2018 launch of the ZE1. The redesigned 2026 Leaf's first graded result under the updated protocol was only Acceptable vehicle-to-vehicle, which argues against crediting the older system more generously.

Blind Spot Warning and Rear Cross Traffic Alert are standard on both trims rather than locked behind an options pack, and rear automatic braking adds a genuine intervention layer behind the car when backing out. It stays under the top band because the blind spot system is alert-only — there is no steering-based Blind Spot Intervention on the Leaf — and no safe-exit alert for rear passengers.

Lane departure warning and lane departure prevention are standard on both trims, and the SV PLUS volume trim's ProPILOT Assist adds true lane centering — so the coverage is there. The execution is the problem: testers describe the centering as inconsistent, sometimes nudging back to center smoothly and sometimes not reacting to a drifting lane line at all, which is squarely mid-band behavior rather than a system you learn to trust.

ProPILOT Assist on the SV PLUS is a full-speed-range Intelligent Cruise Control with stop-and-hold that will bring the car to a standstill in traffic and resume, combined with lane centering — a competent, conventional highway assist. It is the original single-lane ProPILOT, not the Navi-link or 2.1 versions, and the base S drops to plain cruise control, so this lands mid-pack rather than high.

No hands-free highway system is offered on the 2024 Leaf at any trim or price. ProPILOT Assist requires hands on the wheel and warns then disengages if it does not detect them; Nissan's hands-off ProPILOT Assist 2.1 was never extended to the Leaf.

IIHS has never published a headlight rating for this generation of Leaf, so nothing here is verified. The SV PLUS volume trim at least gets LED headlamps with LED daytime running lights and fog lights, and High Beam Assist is standard fleet-wide — but the base S is still on automatic halogen projectors, and there is no curve-adaptive or matrix function on either trim.

The second-generation Leaf keeps a genuinely upright hatchback greenhouse — a tall glasshouse, a fairly low cowl and slim A-pillars give an easy forward and three-quarter view that the low-roof EVs replacing it do not match. The high rear deck, chunky C-pillars and the spoiler cutting across the top of the backlight are the weak spot, and the SV PLUS answers that with a standard Intelligent Around View Monitor 360-degree camera while the S makes do with a rear camera and parking sensors.

IIHS rates the Leaf's child seat anchors Marginal — a verified result, not an estimate. Only the two outboard rear positions have complete LATCH hardware; the center seat gets a tether anchor alone and has to borrow lower anchors, so three across is not a supported installation. The anchors themselves sit buried in the seat bight rather than in open guides.

Both 2024 trims are five-seaters with a 60/40-split bench, the maximum the compact-hatchback band recognizes — though the raised battery floor and a hard center hump mean the middle rear position is a short-trip seat in practice.

41.2 in clears the top of the hatchback band outright; the Leaf's tall, upright greenhouse was designed around an early-EV packaging brief and the total absence of a moonroof on either trim means nothing eats into it.

42.1 in lands mid-band for a compact hatchback — adequate rather than generous, and reviewers consistently report the front seats as roomy even if the battery-raised floor leaves taller drivers with a slightly knees-up posture.

37.3 in is comfortably above the hatchback band's midpoint and is the second row's one genuine strength — the roofline stays high all the way back rather than tapering the way most modern hatchbacks do.

33.5 in sits just above the floor of the hatchback band and is the single worst dimension in the car: the 106.3-in wheelbase is short for the class and the battery pack pushes the rear cushion up, so adults sit with knees high and little under-thigh support.

23.6 cu ft behind the second row is strong on paper for a compact hatchback, but the usable shape is worse than the number: the floor is sunken with a high load lip, and the folded seatbacks leave a pronounced step rather than a flat load deck.

Storage is functional and nothing more: glovebox, a shallow console cubby, an under-armrest bin, one seatback pocket, two cup holders and four bottle holders, and a single 12-volt outlet. There is no frunk, no underfloor cargo well (the portable charge cable occupies what space exists), no household AC power and no fold-flat load floor — the things this framework rewards as clever solutions are all absent.

Front seats earn consistent praise — well-cushioned and supportive, with an 8-way power driver's seat including 2-way lumbar on the SV PLUS volume trim (the S makes do with 6-way manual and no lumbar). The rear bench is what pulls the score down: reviewers repeatedly flag it as tight with short under-thigh support, and the battery-raised floor leaves a knees-up posture for anyone adult-sized.

The ~3,900-lb curb weight and low-slung battery give the Leaf a settled, well-damped ride over broken pavement with little body float, and testers note the suspension absorbs rough surfaces without passing vibration into the cabin. It stops short of the top band because the rear end is a simple torsion beam and the secondary ride gets brittle over sharp, square-edged bumps.

Around town the absence of an engine makes the Leaf genuinely hushed, and Nissan fits noise insulation and UV-reducing solar glass. At highway speed the advantage evaporates: the 0.28 Cd body and low-rolling-resistance tires let wind flutter and road roar through with nothing to mask them, which is the classic failing of a lower-cost EV.

The SV PLUS volume trim covers the essentials well — heated front seats, heated leather-wrapped steering wheel, heated outside mirrors, the more efficient hybrid heater system, automatic temperature control, and remote cabin pre-conditioning through the NissanConnect EV app. It is capped below the top band by what simply is not offered on any 2024 trim: no ventilated seats, no rear climate vents, no heated rear seats and no moonroof — and the base S gets none of the heating hardware at all.

The 40-kWh LEAF S opened 2024 at $28,140 before a $1,115 destination charge, which is a low entry price in absolute terms — but it buys only 149 miles of EPA range, so the cheap ticket is cheap for a reason.

The SV PLUS is scored as the representative configuration — matching how cat1/cat2 score this model year — and at $37,305 delivered it is the trim most 2024 buyers actually took, since the 149-mile S is unusable for many. That is a lot of money for 212 miles of range in 2024.

Servicing a Leaf is close to the cheapest thing in the segment — no oil, no transmission service, no exhaust, and regenerative braking that stretches pad life well past an ICE hatchback's. The figure is a blend of scheduled-service estimates and an allowance for out-of-warranty repairs in years four and five, when only the 8-year battery coverage is still running.

This is the single worst number on the 2024 Leaf's ownership sheet and the reason the category lands below its segment peers. Three forces compound: the nameplate's decade-long reputation for air-cooled battery degradation, a 2024 car that could be bought new with a $3,750 federal credit (which drags the used market down with it), and a CHAdeMO fast-charge port on a network that is being decommissioned — a used-car liability no other EV carries.

Nissan's standard New Vehicle Limited Warranty, at the bottom of the segment band — Hyundai and Kia covered directly competing EVs for five years, and Nissan has never matched it.

Scored on the EV battery term, which the item definition allows in place of a conventional powertrain warranty and which is the coverage that actually matters on this car. Eight years / 100,000 miles is the federal minimum and the mainstream-EV norm, and the capacity clause is meaningful on a Leaf specifically — but the EV system and drive components themselves drop out at just five years.

No factory-paid scheduled maintenance — nothing on nissanusa.com offers one for the 2024 LEAF, and dealer pages claiming '3 years of included maintenance' are not backed by any Nissan program document. What is real is three years of 24/7 roadside assistance with EV-specific out-of-charge towing, complimentary multi-point inspections at LEAF-certified dealers, and NissanConnect EV remote charge and climate control. Scored just below the Nissan brand baseline of 50 in this dataset because the 2024 car shipped with no charging credit of any kind and a CHAdeMO port, so there is no public-charging benefit to speak of — the 2026 Leaf earns its higher mark on native NACS and Supercharger access that this generation never got.

$37,305 volume-trim price minus its estimated resale value after 5 years (31% retained, or about $11,565) leaves about $25,740 in depreciation. Add the projected $3,400 in 5-year maintenance and repairs, and owning this vehicle for 5 years costs about $29,140 in total.

Both major predictors land on 'average' for the 2024 Leaf, and the car earns that rather than defaulting to it: 2024 is the seventh model year of the ZE1 generation, so the design is thoroughly debugged, and a single-motor EV has no engine, transmission, exhaust or — critically for Nissan — CVT to fail. What keeps it out of the 80s is that the accumulated owner complaints are real if minor, and the passively cooled battery is a long-horizon liability that predicted-reliability scores measure poorly.

Brand-level item, held identical to the figure already scored for the other 2024 Nissans in this dataset. Nissan sits in the lower-middle of multi-year dependability — behind Toyota, Honda and Hyundai in Consumer Reports brand rankings and around mid-pack in J.D. Power's Vehicle Dependability Study — with CVT durability the single largest historical drag on the brand's record, a liability the Leaf's single-speed EV drivetrain does not carry.

The 2024 model year carries zero NHTSA safety recalls — a genuinely clean sheet, and the payoff of scoring the last full year of a long-running generation whose earlier defects had already been engineered out. It is held short of the 90s because the generation's own log is not clean (battery-overheat, speed-control and rearview-camera campaigns all landed on 2018-2023 cars), and because the 2024 Leaf's very low US sales volume is part of why it escaped them.

This splits cleanly in two. The drive unit is one of the most proven EV powertrains on the market — the EM57 motor and single-speed reducer have been in production since 2013 across more than half a million Leafs worldwide, with motor and inverter failures rare enough not to register as a complaint pattern. The battery is the opposite: the pack is passively air-cooled with no active thermal management, which is the root cause of the Leaf's well-documented accelerated capacity loss in hot climates and of 'Rapidgate' fast-charge throttling on repeat DC sessions. The 62-kWh SV PLUS ages better than the old 24-kWh cars but the fundamental weakness is unchanged.

Reviewers are consistent and unflattering: hard plastic across the entire dashboard, door panels and console, a headliner one review likened to cardboard under thin fuzz, and a design that had visibly aged out by 2024 next to the Ariya, let alone against a Mazda3 or Civic. Good grain and ergonomics keep it from feeling punitive at the $29,255 S price, but the volume SV PLUS is a $37,305 car, and judged against what that money buys this is a weak cabin.

Assembly is the better half of build quality here: 2024 cars came off Smyrna, Tennessee, in the twelfth and final year of Leaf production on that line, about as mature a build as a nameplate gets, and no panel-gap or misassembly pattern attaches to the car. The score stays mid-band because the small-stuff complaints are numerous — rattles, trim fit, failing horns and spurious warning lights are the recurring owner themes, cheap-feeling rather than broken.

Both halves of this item are strong for 2024. Coverage is dense — roughly a thousand US franchises, so a Leaf owner has a dealer within reach almost anywhere, unlike an EV-only brand's direct-service model — and Nissan's dealership service satisfaction was measured at the top of the mass market that year, not merely adequate. Held out of the 80s by Leaf-specific friction: EV technician depth varies considerably store to store, and by 2024 the Leaf was a low-volume, end-of-life nameplate on a soon-to-be-orphaned CHAdeMO standard, which is not the car a service department is best practiced on.

Routine running costs are among the cheapest in the segment — no oil, plugs, belts or transmission service, and regenerative braking that stretches pad life well past a gas hatchback's — and after fourteen years the Leaf has the deepest independent-service and salvage-pack ecosystem of any non-Tesla EV. Against that, every high-voltage component is effectively dealer-only, there is no meaningful performance aftermarket, and the out-of-warranty exposure is severe: a pack replacement is a four- to five-figure event rather than a repair bill. CHAdeMO's obsolescence adds a long-term parts risk no gas Nissan carries.

8 inches sits barely above the floor of the hatchback band and there is no step up: the same unit is fitted to both trims, unchanged since this generation's 2018 launch, while rivals in the class now ship 10–12 in as standard.

The system's saving grace is its physicality — real knobs and hard buttons flank the screen, so volume, tuning and climate never require a menu dive, and the software is simple enough to be quick. Against that, the graphics and menu architecture are a 2018 design that reviewers call dated, and the built-in EV routing is poorly executed: the navigation has been caught steering drivers to gas stations rather than chargers.

Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard on every 2024 trim, which puts the Leaf squarely in the 'wired standard' band — but wireless projection is not offered anywhere in the range, not even as an option on the SV PLUS, so there is no upper-trim upgrade path either.

The SV PLUS volume trim does include real native navigation — Nissan Door to Door Navigation with Premium Traffic, which can hand a destination off between phone and car and give walking directions at the far end — but the base S has no built-in maps at all. The onboard voice recognition is command-list based rather than natural-language, and testers advise bypassing it for phone projection.

The 2024 range tops out at a six-speaker AM/FM system on the SV PLUS and four speakers on the S. There is no branded premium option anywhere in the lineup — the Bose system disappeared when Nissan cut the SL trim for 2023 — so a buyer of the most expensive Leaf cannot pay for better sound at any price.

A 7-inch reconfigurable colour TFT is standard on both trims and handles EV-specific duty well — energy flow, range, charge state and driver-assist status. It is only a partial digital cluster, though: it shares the binnacle with a physical analogue speedometer dial rather than replacing it, which is why it reads as a generation behind the fully digital displays now common in the segment.

There is no whole-vehicle over-the-air update capability. Nissan's own OTA programme is built around its newer connected platform — the ARIYA is the EV it documents — and the 2024 Leaf is not listed among OTA-capable vehicles; what this car receives through NissanConnect EV is limited to map and connected-services data, with anything else requiring a dealer visit.

NissanConnect EV & Services covers the core EV remote set — lock/unlock, start and stop charging, charge timers, remote cabin heating and cooling, charge-state monitoring, plus an Amazon Alexa skill — and is complimentary for three years on the SV PLUS. It stays mid-band because there is no digital key or phone-as-key, the app has a long-standing reputation for sluggish and unreliable command delivery, and the functionality is subscription-gated once the trial lapses.

Four data ports is a reasonable count, but the mix is dated — three of them are USB-A and only one is USB-C — and the supporting equipment is thin: a single 12-volt outlet, no wireless charging pad on any trim, and no household AC outlet or vehicle-to-load power despite this being an EV with a 60-kWh pack.

Nissan Intelligent Key with push-button start is standard on both trims, so proximity entry is never an upcharge, and remote pre-conditioning is handled through the app in place of a conventional remote start. It is held to the middle of the band by the omissions: no phone-as-key or digital key sharing, no hands-free or power hatch (the tailgate is manual on every trim), and no remote parking function.

The SV PLUS volume trim is well equipped here for a mainstream compact: Nissan's Intelligent Around View Monitor gives a true 360-degree bird's-eye view, backed by a rear sonar system and Rear Automatic Braking, with the RearView Monitor standard even on the S. Camera resolution is visibly dated for 2024, there are no front parking sensors, and no automated parking assist is offered — so it earns a good mid-band score rather than a top one.

No head-up display is offered on the 2024 Leaf at any trim level, in any package, or as a dealer accessory.

The hardware itself is mediocre and IIHS says so: LATCH ease-of-use is rated Marginal because the lower anchors sit too deep in the seat bight, and only two positions have complete hardware. Against that, the rear doors open wide on an upright body, Rear Door Alert is standard, and 23.6 cu ft will take a stroller — but the 33.5-in rear legroom makes a rear-facing seat a real negotiation with the front passenger, and the sunken cargo floor with its high lip fights every stroller lift.

The equipment story is genuinely good for a family budget — Nissan Safety Shield 360 is standard on the $29k base car, covering AEB with pedestrian detection, blind-spot warning and intervention, rear cross-traffic alert, rear automatic braking, lane departure warning and high-beam assist, and NHTSA gives the Leaf 5 stars overall. What keeps it out of the top band is the crash-test record behind that star: IIHS has never awarded the Leaf a Top Safety Pick, has no small-overlap or roof-strength rating for this generation, rated the updated side test only Acceptable with a Marginal structure, and rates the LATCH hardware Marginal.

This is where the Leaf's compromises compound. The back seat is tight and short on under-thigh support, there are no rear climate vents, no rear-seat entertainment and no dedicated rear USB-C; and the 212-mi EPA range means a family of four with luggage is stopping every two-and-a-half hours for a 45–60 minute CHAdeMO session — on a connector network that is contracting rather than growing.

Commuting is what this car is actually for and it is very good at it. Instant torque from a standstill, no shifts or stop/start shudder, e-Pedal one-pedal driving that will bring the car to a full halt in traffic, light controls, an electronic parking brake with automatic hold, and ProPILOT Assist on the volume trim to handle stop-and-go highway crawling. The only real frictions are the learning curve on e-Pedal and Eco mode's deliberately dulled throttle.

Per-mile running cost is near the bottom of the market: the EPA puts annual energy at about $700 over 15,000 miles at 109 MPGe combined, and EV consumables are minimal — no oil, no plugs, no belts, and regenerative braking that spares the friction pads for years. A home 240-V charge overnight on off-peak rates makes the real figure lower still.

At 176.4 in long and 70.5 in wide the Leaf is an easy urban footprint, the tall glasshouse gives real outward visibility, and the SV PLUS's Intelligent Around View Monitor plus rear sonar make tight bays straightforward. It falls short of the top band on one measurable count — the SV PLUS's 17-in wheels stretch the curb-to-curb turning circle to 36.1 ft, mid-pack rather than city-car nimble (the 16-in S manages 34.8 ft).

The Leaf carries no US tow rating at all, has no bed, drives only its front wheels, and offers 23.6 cu ft of awkwardly shaped cargo space. Nothing about it is meaningfully work-capable beyond carrying a courier's parcels.

The known weak point is structural to the design: the Leaf's battery is passively air-cooled with no liquid thermal management, so repeated DC fast-charging and sustained heat accelerate capacity loss in a way that hard-duty fleet use guarantees. The cabin is cloth-trimmed with no wipe-clean or work-grade option, and the single-motor drivetrain itself is simple and proven, which is the one point in its favour.

There is essentially no work provision. One 12-volt outlet is the extent of onboard power — no household AC outlet and no vehicle-to-load export in the US market despite the CHAdeMO port's bidirectional potential elsewhere. No roof rails or crossbars are offered from the factory, no hitch, no washable surfaces, and the accessory catalogue runs to floor mats, a cargo net and a cargo organiser.

212 miles of EPA range would be merely weak; the CHAdeMO connector makes it a genuine obstacle, since the plug is being decommissioned across US networks and the cars that use it are increasingly locked out of new high-power sites. Even when a working unit is found, 45 minutes to 80% at 100 kW — 60 minutes on the far more common 50-kW hardware — turns a 500-mile day into an exercise in logistics, which comfortable front seats and ProPILOT Assist cannot offset.

Front-wheel drive only, 5.9 in of ground clearance, low-rolling-resistance all-season tires, no tow rating and no roof-load provision. The Leaf is a pavement car with no adventure pretensions, and unlike a gas hatchback it cannot even be refuelled at the end of a dirt road.

A hatchback opening and a 60/40-split fold-down rear seat give some flexibility, and 30.0 cu ft with the bench down handles a weekend's luggage. But the shape works against the number: the load floor is sunken with a high lip, the folded seatbacks leave a step rather than a flat deck, the portable charge cable eats what underfloor space exists, and with no roof rails and no hitch there is no way to add capacity outside the car.

The floor-mounted battery gives the Leaf a low centre of gravity that keeps it flat and neutral through corners, and testers describe the chassis as well-balanced, predictable and easy to control. It stays in the secure-but-unremarkable band rather than climbing higher because the rear end is a torsion beam, the tires are chosen for rolling resistance rather than grip, and the SV PLUS carries 3,901 lb.

The speed-sensitive electric rack is weighted heavily enough at first touch to suggest sporting intent, then delivers none of it — reviewers consistently describe it as vague and devoid of road feedback. It is accurate enough to place the car, but the disconnect between the effort and the information is exactly what this item's lower band describes.

Regen blending is the strong part: e-Pedal was one of the better early one-pedal calibrations and will decelerate the car to a standstill smoothly, with a B-mode setting for extra retardation short of full one-pedal. Vented discs front and rear back it up. The friction brakes themselves are the weaker half — the pedal is soft and long in its initial travel where regen hands over, and the low-rolling-resistance tires limit ultimate stopping distance.

A single 160-kW motor with no gearbox means no shift interruption, no stop/start shudder and full torque from zero — the SV PLUS's 250 lb-ft arrives instantly and cleanly. Two things hold it below the top band: Eco mode noticeably dulls tip-in at low speed, and the passively air-cooled pack lets output soften when hot or low on charge, so the delivery is not always the same twice.

There is effectively nothing to hear or feel from the drivetrain — no combustion, no gear changes, no idle shake, and only a faint inverter whine under hard acceleration. This is the Leaf's most unambiguous strength behind the wheel and sits comfortably in the top band; it stops short of a perfect score only because wind and tire noise fill the silence at highway speed.

36.1 ft on the SV PLUS volume trim is mid-band for a compact hatchback — fine in a parking structure, but the wider 215/50R17 tires cost it more than a foot of agility against the 16-in S, which is the more manoeuvrable car of the two.

The volume trim gives the driver an 8-way power seat with 2-way lumbar and a tilt-and-telescoping column — this generation fixed the original Leaf's tilt-only wheel — and the physical knobs for audio and climate keep the main controls within reach. The compromise is inherent to the packaging: the battery raises the floor without a matching drop in seat height, so taller drivers sit knees-up and cannot get as low as they would like.

There is a flicker of character — 250 lb-ft from rest makes the Leaf feel brisker than its 6.8-second 0–60 suggests, and e-Pedal turns a commute into a mildly absorbing game of not touching the brake. But the numb steering, the low-rolling-resistance tires and testers' plain verdict that this is 'not a sporty car' leave it pleasant and forgettable rather than something you take the long way home in.

Safety content is the strong half: Nissan Safety Shield 360 — six active systems including automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, blind spot warning with intervention, rear cross traffic alert and lane intervention — is standard on both trims, plus a DC fast-charge port and an 8-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto even on the base S. Comfort content is the weak half: cloth seats, manual adjustment, and heated seats, heated steering wheel, navigation, Around View Monitor and ProPILOT Assist all locked to the SV PLUS, so the car is well-equipped for safety and merely adequate for everything else.

On list price the 2024 Leaf is poor value: $29,255 delivered buys 149 miles of range on the S, and $37,305 buys 212 miles on the SV PLUS, at a time when a Chevrolet Bolt EUV asked under $29,000 for 247 miles and a Kona Electric or Niro EV offered 250-plus for similar money. The generous standard safety kit and genuinely low running costs claw some of it back, but the underlying hardware — a 2018-vintage air-cooled pack and a CHAdeMO port — is not competitive per dollar. Note this item scores the sticker, not the deal; the Leaf's real-world transaction advantage is captured under incentives below.

Two trims, full stop — S and SV PLUS — with an $8,050 gap between them, no AWD at any price, no performance variant and essentially no factory options beyond dealer accessories. Nissan called the two-trim lineup 'streamlined' when it cut it for the 2023 refresh; from a buyer's side it is take-it-or-leave-it, with no way to get the 60-kWh battery without also buying the whole SV PLUS package.

7,582 US sales in 2024 — up about 25% on 2023's 6,083, and Nissan made much of a 187% third-quarter jump, but that is a rebound inside a long slide from the 14,239 units of 2021, and the model held well under one percent of the US EV market. A recognized nameplate that most buyers had stopped considering.

Nissan sits below the mainstream middle on brand strength, leaning on incentives and fleet volume, and the Leaf nameplate carries a specific reputation problem of its own: more than a decade of owner reports of accelerated capacity loss from the passively air-cooled battery, which is the first thing a used-EV shopper hears about the car. Pioneer status earns it recognition, not desire.

Scored on buyer benefit, and by that measure the 2024 Leaf was one of the best-subsidised cars on sale. It lost the federal credit entirely on 1 January 2024 under the new IRA battery-sourcing rules, then regained $3,750 of it for cars built in 2024 and sold from 6 March — while the full $7,500 remained available the whole time through the commercial-lease pass-through. Stack that on a slow-selling car the dealer wanted gone, add state credits, and advertised leases fell into double digits per month in the strongest states. The one caveat is that this is desperation pricing on a car the market had turned away from.

2024 is the seventh model year of the ZE1 second generation launched for 2018, and the only intervening change was the 2023 cosmetic refresh and trim cull — the platform, the 40/60-kWh air-cooled packs and the CHAdeMO port all date to the original car. The connector in particular had become an orphan by 2024, with the rest of the industry committing to NACS, and the all-new third generation arrived two years later for 2026. A buyer signing in 2024 was buying one cycle from obsolescence.

Reviewers were mildly positive and uniformly unenthusiastic: competent, cheap to run and easy to live with around town, undone by short range, slow and awkward CHAdeMO charging and a dated cabin. Nobody picked it as the class winner, and it took no major award for 2024 — no NACTOY nod, no 10Best, no comparison-test victory.