Bringing out the sports car passion. Electrically.

Nissan’s bold, yet pretty Esflow concept shows a company striving to link up its sports car acumen with electric vehicle technology. This purely electric vehicle car accelerates from 0-60 mph in under five seconds, can be fully charged after 10 hours (using 220 volts and consuming 3.3 kilowatts in the process) and uses an aluminum chassis and carbon fiber body panels.

The result? It’s lighter than the current Nissan Leaf electric vehicle, with which it shares general technology.

The lithium-ion batteries of the Esflow are centralized between the front and rear axle lines, netting a good basic layout for agile, dynamic handling. Concentrating mass at one end of the car or the other would result in less-than-optimal handling characteristics, something Nissan has learned long ago through its sports car manufacturing. Tatsuya Shiosaki, Exploratory and Advanced Product Manager at Nissan and the man in charge of the Esflow, is clearly stoked.

"The business condition of the sports car segment is difficult,” says Shiosaki. While there are no current plans to put an Esflow into production, Shiosaki grins at the possibility. "Nissan wants to express that the passion we have for sports cars can fit into an electric vehicle platform. I hope it’s a starting point for a dialog on this possibility.”

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