Nissan tells Carscoops the new Leaf keeps things simple, making life easier for first-time buyers entering the electric world
For anyone who has been following the direction of automotive interiors in recent years, one trend is impossible to ignore: screens are everywhere, and with them comes a complete shake-up of how drivers interact with their cars.
More: Nissan Is Dropping The Ariya EV After 2025
That shift is most obvious in models like the latest Porsche Cayenne Electric, where almost everything routes through a display. Nissan’s new Leaf EV has a big fancy screen, too, but it’s taken a decidedly different approach than most other automakers, with its ergonomics, controls, and design following those of most conventional ICE cars. Christian Spencer, a Nissan senior manager, tells us why.
“Seventy-five percent of buyers will be purchasing this having never driven an electric car before,” he told Carscoops. “We wanted to make this car feel familiar.” That philosophy is obvious from the moment you slip into the cabin.
Buttons Where You Expect Them
Rather than shove the vast majority, if not all, controls into the infotainment screen, the Leaf looks decidedly straightforward. The start button and the turn signals are where anyone might expect them to be and the gear selector is placed in the dash like, for instance, in the Armada.
Spencer explained that the team wasn’t focused on what rivals were doing with buttons or screens: “We looked at the kind of ICE vehicles that this potential customer is coming out of. Can they get in the car and turn it on? Can they figure out how to use the turn signals? Can they figure out how to get it in gear?”
Not the Ariya Approach
All this, however, comes in stark contrast to the Ariya, Nissan’s more premium EV, where elements like climate controls blend into the dash’s inlay. In the Leaf, the HVAC buttons are obvious and sit prominently above the main dash and below the infotainment screen. Physical media controls remain in place as well, eliminating the need to hunt through menus for basic adjustments.
“For some vehicles, that sort of stuff is a novelty, but we considered this as an opportunity to make it accessible,” Spencer added. That accessibility-first mindset is apparent across the cabin: the layout is simple without feeling cheap, straightforward without feeling dated.
Betting on Normalcy
In an era when many automakers are stripping away physical controls in favor of screens and gestures, Nissan is betting that normalcy is the wise thing to do, at least in its mainstream models. And if three out of four Leaf buyers are walking into the EV world for the first time, keeping things familiar might be exactly what gets them to stay.
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