Nissan 315X

Nissan may have brought electric cars to the mainstream with the Leaf back in 2010, but its EV heritage reaches much further.

At the 1970 Tokyo Motor Show—55 years before today—the company unveiled a small electric city car called the Nissan 315X.

Two versions of the 315X appeared on Nissan’s stand. The 315X-a was a fully enclosed three-door city commuter, while the doorless 315X-b was designed as an open resort runabout.

Both were two-seaters and shared the same tiny footprint: 2416 mm (95 in) long, 1350 mm (53 in) wide, and 1397 mm (55 in) tall, with a wheelbase of 1500 mm (59 in).

For context, that made it nearly five inches shorter than the original Smart Car and gave it a wheelbase shorter by 18 inches.

A pack of ten 60Ah lead-acid batteries sat within a welded steel chassis equipped with four-wheel independent suspension on coil springs. The batteries powered a 5 kW motor that drove the rear wheels through a thyristor chopper system to modulate voltage.

Performance was modest: a top speed of 60 km/h (37 mph) and 0–30 km/h (18.6 mph) in 6 seconds. But at a steady 40 km/h (25 mph), it could travel about 90 km (56 miles)—perfectly adequate for city errands. It even featured early regenerative braking, using the motor’s resistance to assist the drum brakes.

The 315X never made it to production and didn’t reshape urban mobility. It wasn’t even Nissan’s first electric car. But it does highlight one thing clearly: Nissan has been thinking about EVs for a very long time.