Nissan Leaf: America's cheapest EV, and the robotaxi it becomes
The Leaf you can buy for $29,990 keeps your hands on the wheel. The Leaf Nissan handed to Wayve, Uber and NVIDIA has no driver at all — and arrives in Tokyo this year. Thirteen years after Nissan promised autonomy by 2020.
In August 2013, Carlos Ghosn stood up and committed Nissan to autonomous driving by 2020 — cars that would learn new roads, need no pre-loaded maps, and carry no dependence on outside infrastructure. What actually arrived by 2020 was ProPILOT 2.0: hands-off, single-lane, mapped-highway, eyes-on, on one Japanese saloon. Thirteen years later the flagship American system, ProPILOT Assist 2.1, is still hands-off, single-lane, mapped-highway and eyes-on — and Nissan is the only one of the big three hands-free makers that will not publish how many miles of road it covers. GM says 750,000. Ford says 130,000. Nissan offers an interactive map and no number.
The car is better than that sounds. The third-generation Leaf starts at $29,990, which makes it the cheapest new EV in America; it has a native Tesla plug, 303 miles of range in S+ trim, and Edmunds measured 310. It is a crossover now rather than a hatchback, it does vehicle-to-load, and it arrives with the company in visibly better shape than a year ago — a first quarterly profit in two years, sixteen straight months of US retail growth, after a restructuring that cut 20,000 jobs and took Nissan from seventeen plants to ten. What the Leaf you can buy does not get is 2.1. It ships with hands-on ProPILOT Assist and Safety Shield 360.
When Nissan's genuinely map-free autonomous system arrives — the one Ghosn described in 2013. It is licensed from Wayve, a British startup Nissan now part-owns, and it debuts on a Japanese minivan.
The autonomy
Nissan protected autonomy through the worst restructuring in its history, and the shape of what it protected is telling. It signed Wayve in December 2025, took equity in the startup's $1.5-billion round in February, and made AI Drive the centrepiece of an April strategy that promises it on ninety per cent of the lineup. The next-generation ProPILOT pairs a roof lidar with eleven cameras and five radars and launches in Japan in the 2027 financial year, on the Elgrand. And this very car is the robotaxi: a Leaf running Wayve's driver on NVIDIA's Hyperion platform, dual Thor chips, no HD maps at all, bookable through Uber in Tokyo late this year with a safety operator aboard and a 76-year-old taxi firm running the depot, because Japanese law requires it. Two Leafs, then. The one on the forecourt keeps its hands on the wheel. The one on Uber doesn't have a driver — and its brain was bought, not built.
"Nissan promised map-free autonomy by 2020 and is delivering it in 2027, licensed from a company founded four years after the promise was made."
What we're watching
- The Tokyo robotaxi pilot actually launching — still "late 2026, subject to the authorities."
- Whether next-generation ProPILOT holds its 2027 date; one ride-along report already points at early 2028.
- Whether Nissan ever publishes a mapped-mileage figure for 2.1. The silence is its own answer.
Spec sheet — Nissan Leaf (2026)
The ai.cars verdict
- The cheapest new EV in America, with a native Tesla plug and a tested 310 miles — a genuinely strong car.
- Its own driver assistance is hands-on only; the hands-free 2.1 system goes to Rogues and Armadas, not to this.
- ProPILOT Assist 2.1 is the least-mapped of the big three hands-free systems, and Nissan won't say by how much.
- The map-free autonomy Nissan promised for 2020 arrives in 2027, licensed from Wayve rather than built in-house.
- Verdict: buy the Leaf on price and range. The autonomy story belongs to the same car with somebody else's brain in it.
How does it stack up? Compare the Leaf with the Chevrolet Equinox EV, or build your own comparison.
