Nissan announces 2026 Leaf pricing, 300 mile range starting at $29,990 | Hacker News Reader

Nissan announces 2026 Leaf pricing, 300 mile range starting at $29,990

arstechnica.com

25 pointscoldpie17 comments

One thing that amuses me about EVs is that the fact that as you get "nicer" trims, you usually get less range (usually due to larger wheels)

"The Leaf S+ is the base model, with a 75 kWh long-range battery and a range of 303 miles ... The Leaf SV+ adds bigger wheels and a better infotainment system ... has a range of 288 miles"

(The same is true of my EV6, where the GT-Line trim has less range than the less expensive Wind trim)

bigger wheels are likely largest contributor, and puzzling part that many people don't want them: they give harsher ride in addition to mpg drop.

What's the upside from bigger wheels? There must be a reason they make them bigger for more-premium cars.

Aesthetics.

Looks. Primarily at least, until you get into ultra-performance vehicles not really built for driving on public roads.

I recently upgraded to my "dream" daily driver car that came with 22" rims from the factory. It's definitely the worst part of the vehicle. Unfortunately I can't go much smaller, as 21" are the smallest that fit over the giant brake calipers.

Due to the weight of the vehicle, the larger brakes are likely needed - but the difference between this "performance" version of my car vs. the "luxury" version built on exactly the same body/chassis but with 19" wheels is night and day for day to day ride quality on poorly maintained city streets.

Once you get on fresh blacktop on the highway and start taking corners at a high rate of speed it's a different story, then the car just glides and "sticks" to the road super well due to the giant (wide) wheels. But that accounts for perhaps 5% of my driving if that.

buying the car and fitting smaller rims on it is too obvious, so there must be something I'm missing

It really depends on the size of the brakes. The real reason to fit bigger wheels is to clear larger brakes for better stopping power. Usually a higher performance trim level will have larger brakes to make up for the extra speed or weight. But that became a styling trend that just trickled down in a lot of cases to "it looks cool" because you see it on so many performance cars. Many cars now have gigantic wheels that can easily be downsized.

I know a couple people who have done it. You get much better ride because you have taller sidewalls, and you're much less likely to destroy a tire when you hit an object. These massive wheels on cars now are totally ridiculous.

Not just true for EVs, even the Toyota Prius which no one pretends is a cool car has larger wheels on its mid and high end trims. Those trims drop the gas mileage almost 10%. Pickup trucks also have bigger wheels on their higher end trims even though they make the truck less capable offroad, but those are probably not being sold to people who do most work anyway.

Car trims and packages seem well-tuned to ensure the manufacturer and dealer make more money selling things the buyer doesn't want because they're included in things the buyer actually wants.

Is that limited to EVs? Unless they slightly increase the fuel tank in the different trims in ICE vehicles then any extra weight will reduce the maximum range due to the mpg being lower.

It makes a difference in aviation, but the petrol -> mechanical energy conversion of an ICE is so lossy that it makes barely any difference in a car.

My car's fuel efficiency barely changes when I go from just me in the car to 5 people in the car, but a EV's range will change substantially (I presume).

Why would you presume that? if a gasoline car doesn't get appreciable difference when there's the extra weight of 4 additional people in it, why would an EV, which is the same four wheels and aerodynamics, just with a different motor in it going to be any different?

Because the battery -> mechanical energy process is basically lossless while the petrol -> mechanical energy process is lossy in a way that is largely insensitive to the power output.

ie. an EV that needs to produce 1kW might use 1.1kW from the battery and when it needs to produce 2kW it might draw 2.2kW (~2x) from the battery. So 10% increase in weight might result in a 10% reduction in range.

An ICE that needs 1kW mechanical energy will probably burn 10kW worth of petrol; when it needs 2kW of mechanical energy it’ll burn 11kW (<2x) of petrol. So a 10% increase in weight would result in a <10% reduction in range.

It's true an ICE has non-linear output power, and a "sweet spot", but at freeway speeds the force required to move the car is dominated by air resistance rather than weight, especially considering how heavy cars are to begin with. Adding 10% mass only costs ~3.5% at freeway speeds.

Directionally, your numbers are right, but we'd be looking at more like 5 kW to idle an ICE regardless, and then 6 kW for 1 kW output and 7kW for 2kW output (efficiency going from 17% to 29%). Instead of doubling output though, we'd only need to go from 1 kW to ~1.035 kW if we increased mass by 10%.

Which brings us to the topic of the batteries being heavy AF, but that's a whole other question.

a few things:

- wider grippy tires have more rolling resistance

- lower horsepower motors use less electricity

- many options weigh more, especially larger batteries

- many options use electricity, like seat heaters

(although bigger motors + batteries might be able to recapture more regenerative braking)

Let's see how much the dealers will mark it up. In recent years, many cars that were advertised as reasonably priced ended up being unaffordable due to dealer pricing.

Just let us buy BYD already...

All these EVs should design affordable battery replacements from the start, to help reassure the owner. Imagine if they could promise the battery replacement cost would never be more than say, $7,500. In fact, I think quick swap batteries and universal connectors should be mandated.

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