Nissan’s surprise for this year’s Geneva Motor Show is this concept car called ESFLOW. It is an electric sports car and with it the Japanese want to prove that going green doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on fun.
The design of the ESFLOW is clearly inspired by the Nissan Juke Crossover with a hint of 370Z, but it is in fact a rear-wheel-drive two-seater sportscar with the same powertrain as in the Nissan LEAF. So while for the sake of sportiness the ESFLOW looks the part, that powetrain is not meaty enough! So they’ve tuned it for this car in a way that it enables the ESFLOW to go from zero to 100 km/h in under 5 seconds.
Power for the motors comes from the same laminated lithium-ion battery packs used in the Nissan LEAF, but in ESFLOW the packs are located along the axis of the front and rear wheels. This centralizes the mass of the car, and thus its rotation point, close to the driver’s hips. These cleverly positioned batteries enable the car to travel over 240km on one charge.
Because this car is a concept there’s no boundaries inn terms design and technology and it shows inside the cabin. It’s a nice and comfi place with fly-by-wire steering and pedals adjust electrically to the best spot to suit each individual driver’s size and preferred driving position. The seats themselves are upholstered in gold leather and perforated gold suede while the doors are trimmed in dark blue leather and suede. The blue and gold motif, the colour of sparks, is continued across the dashboard, which is also adorned with silver carbon trim, and features four multifunction illuminated LCD displays.
While designing the ESFLOW, Nissan has also defined what type of person would buy and drive cars like this. Here’s how they describe it:
Daniel, an ESFLOW owner, works in tech, but lives for the weekend. On Friday night after work, he gets behind the wheels of his ESFLOW which instantly links with his pocket PDA and determines the fastest route to his girlfriend’s home. Finding street side parking is a synch as the ESFLOW’s compact dimensions allow it to slip in to the narrowest of spaces. On Saturday he drives to a popular club to exhibit his DJ skills and his friends are impressed by his cool EV sports car.
On Sunday he drives through the mountains for leisure. ESFLOW’s superb weight distribution and unobstructed view ahead enables him to effortlessly nail every apex, every time. His descent from the mountains is more relaxed and he allows the ESFLOW to overrun on the long sweeping curves, turning the potential energy he and the car gained climbing up the gradients back in to electrical energy he can use once he hits the roads around Barcelona.
