Nissan pioneered the mass-market electric car with the Leaf, launched 15 years ago in 2010. At the 1970 Toky0 Motor Show, 55 years ago, it debuted an all-electric city car called the Nissan 315X. It’s Earth Day, so let’s take a look at an alternative fuel vehicle forgotten to history.
In fact, there were two versions of the 315X at Nissan’s motor show stand that year. The 315X-a was described as a three-door enclosed city runabout, while a door-less open variant was called the 315X-b was intended for use at resorts.
Both were two-seaters and measured length 2416 mm (95 in.) long, 1350 mm wide (53 in), and 1397 mm (55 in.) tall with a 1500 mm (59 in.) wheelbase.d In other words, it was nearly five inches shorter than the original Smart Car with an 18-inch shorter wheelbase.
An array of 10 60ah lead-acid batteries was nestled in its welded steel chassis with 4-wheel independent coil spring suspension. The batteries powered a 5kW motor driving the rear wheels via a thyristor chopper circuit to vary the DC voltage.
That gave the 315X a top speed of 37 mph and a 0-to-30 kph (18.6 mph) acceleration time of six seconds. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly quick, but at 25 mph it had a 56-mile range, enough for city cruising. It even featured regenerative braking and used the friction to assist its drums.
Obviously the 315X never made it to production or revolutionized transportation. It wasn’t even Nissan’s earliest electric car, but it did prove that Nissan has been thinking about EVs for a long, long time.
… Nissan’s electric car approach (which have almost become overlooked for decades as I expected) was rooted from Prince Motors especially when Nissan (back when it was doing business as Datsun overseas except Japan) acquired the former (Prince but not the petrol / gasoline engine of the same name that’s co-developed by PSA Peugeot Citroen later Stellantis and BMW) in 1966, many years after – until Hypermini was released from 1999 (year which Renault bought Nissan) to 2001 and Leaf (whose next generation may come soon) – rest were history, and since then, Nissan and its Leaf have become well-ignored / missed out when a number of people have looked after not only Tesla – but also other car companies which even offers electric vehicles (EVs) and half of them are keeping themselves important like Germany (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen / VW slash Audi slash Porsche) for example.
Similarly, Suzuki made a four-wheeled car with that size and it was called as Twin, production ran from 2003 to 2005. Mitsubishi Motors (which even worked works with both Suzuki and Nissan) too made the i (aka Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero) that latter was replaced by eK C EV (for Mitsubishi aka Nissan Sakura) and Citroen Ami aka Opel Rocks Electric and Fiat Topolino (for C-Zero with Peugeot left without a successor of iOn) as both were also similar to Smart’s Fortwo (later Forfour) which is was obvious since Benz worked with both Nissan and Mitsubishi (especially before former acquired latter in 2016 when one of them are were already part of Renault).
Also, the front end of the 315X looks similar to the Fiat 126, the latter not only being popular in Poland (with production ended in 2000), but also given that both cars (except that 315X was just a concept car only) were seen in 1970s meant that those were designs that existed that time even reaching today per visions of designers or other peoples, likewise, Nissan may have connections with Fiat like when Siam Motors of Thailand (Nissan’s former Thai distributor) assembled Fiat cars for Thai market before it switched to Nissan and later Suzuki and Subaru – similarly Nissan granted Fiat the right to assemble latter’s cars in former’s South African factory for marketing in South Africa (which ended in 2008 just a year before Fiat had purchased Chrysler) and the rest were history…
the 315x just might be nissan’s saving grace.
the design needs minimal updates to be contemporary.
cap the top speed at 45kph, to make it drivers license free in most of Europe and to skate past all those pesky safety rules modern cars have and there you go!
make it fun to drive and prioritise lightness over range too cause who’s gonna drive more than 40 miles per trip in town anyways?
i’d run down to the dealer straight away if they did!