Enlarge / The electric crossover market is starting to get crowded. This is one of the newest entrants: the Nissan Ariya. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)
Before Elon Musk and his Model 3, there was another auto executive with grand plans to electrify the car world. That man is Carlos Ghosn, and while he’s more famous these days for his departure from Nissan, he was a driving force behind the company’s Leaf electric vehicle. The Leaf never quite hit Ghosn’s demanding sales expectations—predictions of 1.5 million Leafs per year by 2016—but Nissan had still sold more than half a million by the start of 2020.
Expecting the Leaf to sell in big numbers here in the US was probably asking too much. Apart from small pockets of vocal Internet commentators, most Americans aren’t fans of hatchbacks unless they come with a high hip point and a commanding view of the road. That’s why Nissan’s next EV is landing in the hotly contested crossover segment. The vehicle is called the Ariya, and it goes on sale in the US this fall.
On the outside, it’s roughly the same size and shape as Nissan’s best-selling Rogue: 183 inches (4,648 mm) long, 74.8 inches (1,900 mm) wide, and 65.4 inches (1,661 mm) tall. But the Ariya’s axles are farther apart, and the inherent packaging properties of an electric powertrain mean that the Ariya’s interior volume is closer to Nissan’s larger, more upmarket Murano.
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