This week in EV tech: The shape of efficiency

Digital Trends

11 hours ago

The Nissan Leaf helped kick off the modern EV age, but Nissan squandered that lead. It's now looking to make up for lost time with the first redesign of the Leaf in nearly a decade. As Giovanny Arroba, VP of Nissan Design Europe and head of the EV's design team, explained in an interview with Digital Trends, the 2026 Nissan Leaf goes back to this model's roots with an emphasis on compactness and affordability.
'It's obviously a car that we want to be attainable to a mass volume,' Arroba said. That meant not only building the new Leaf down to a certain price point, but maintaining enough range to make it usable. As with all EVs, aerodynamics was key. The 2026 Leaf's 0.26 drag coefficient is a significant improvement over the 0.29 of the outgoing Leaf achieve what Nissan claims will be up to 303 miles of range with a 75-kilowatt-hour battery pack. That's a 42% range increase with just a 25% increase in battery capacity.
Concordes and Coke bottles
Shaping the Leaf to be both aerodynamically efficient and aesthetically pleasing was as much about what designers didn't do as what they did, Arroba explained.
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'A shape you would think is the most aerodynamic sometimes may cause drag,' he said. Or it may not look right. A low, sleek nose 'like a Concorde' would cut through the air the cleanest, Arroba acknowledged, but designers went with a broader, grinning front end to give the Leaf a more recognizable 'face.' The more upright front end also helps sell the new Leaf's market positioning as a crossover, rather than the less-popular hatchback body style of the old car.
Moving along the car, the goal was 'less Coke bottle on the body side,' Arroba said, referring to the sucked-in middle sections that create an appearance similar to the iconic beverage receptacle from above. 'The more shape you have on the body side, the more drag it can create.'
Big gains from small details
Big styling changes emphasize that Nissan is (finally) turning over a new Leaf, but smaller details are just as important in reducing drag, and creating a distinctive design, Arroba said.
'The angle of the surface trailing each wheel is super important to maintain attached airflow. In all these subtle angle movements, and where the sharp line cuts off the airflow at the rear of the car, all of these things play a big role.' He added that flush-fit components help as well; Nissan is following numerous other automakers in adopting slick, but potentially finnicky flush door handles.
Also crucial is a dramatic upswing of the rear fenders, culminating in a rear spoiler mounted at a 45-degree angle. Wind-tunnel tests and mathematical calculations showed that angle to be surprisingly important for aerodynamic efficiency, Arroba said. It also gave designers an opportunity to make a statement.
Many EVs — including Nissan's own Ariya — have a horizontal light bar running across the trunk or tailgate. Feeling that this trend is played out, Arroba and his design team went with a mostly-black surface and individual taillights consisting of two horizontal rectangles and three vertical rectangles on each side. This '2-3' arrangement references Nissan's name, as '2-3' is pronounced 'ni-san' in Japanese.
This week's other top EV news
After pausing production at its Austin, Texas, plant amid growing inventories of unsold vehicles, Tesla is touting what it claims is the first autonomous delivery of a new car to a customer. On June 27, a Tesla Model Y drove itself from the Austin factory to a customer's driveway with no one onboard, the company claims. This feat was performed using the same tech as Tesla's recently launched robotaxi service, which operates with human safety drivers onboard, and is being investigated for potential traffic-rule violations.
A next-generation Mercedes-Benz electric van took a somewhat longer journey as part of testing ahead of the van line's 2026 debut. Mercedes claims a prototype was driven from Stuttgart, Germany, to Rome, a distance of about 677 miles, with just two 15-minute charging stops. The vehicle used was a prototype of the VLE luxury passenger van, but cargo vans and other workaday models are planned. At least some of these will reach the U.S., potentially including an even more luxurious version called the VLS, previewed by the Vision V concept revealed earlier this year.
One new EV that likely won't be coming to the U.S. is the Xpeng G7, a crossover SUV close in size to the Tesla Model Y that will sell for around $10,000 less than the Tesla in its home market of China. Xpeng boasts of an expansive augmented-reality head-up display, semi-autonomous driving capability (through a planned over-the-air update) and suspension that can read the road surface and automatically adjust.