As CES winds down, the Tokyo Auto Salon show will be starting up. It’s sort of the Japanese counterpart to SEMA, featuring aftermarket companies and OEMs showing off modified cars and parts. And Nissan will be kicking it off with an unnamed (but seemingly easy to guess) Nismo-tuned EV.
The announcement comes via Nissan’s YouTube channel, where a placeholder video for the reveal stream shows the reveal time and the basics about it being a Nismo EV. And because we’ve embedded it at the top of this post, be sure to come back for the reveal, which will be at 8 p.m. Thursday (tomorrow), January 11. All that’s shown in the placeholder is a silhouette of the vehicle.
Seeing as Nissan only has three EVs on sale, it’s not too hard to guess what this is. One EV, the Leaf, is old and has had a Nismo model released in Japan, so that’s probably out. Another, the Sakura kei EV, is a boxy little thing that doesn’t fit the silhouette at all. So that leaves the Ariya, which has a curvy, short nose that fits the image well.
We’ve also seen spy photos of a sporty Nissan Ariya testing at the Nürburgring last fall. So all things point to the Ariya. It also supports dual motors and pretty decent horsepower numbers as is, so adding more power along with handling upgrades would be a perfect fit. The test Ariya we saw was mildly restyled with a deeper chin spoiler, side skirts and a diffuser. It still had a standard paint scheme, though, which may be spiced up with red accents or some graphics on the production model.
The most powerful Ariya makes a solid 389 horsepower and 445 pound-feet of torque right now. It’s possible that Nissan and Nismo increase the output, but it’s not a guarantee. The Nismo Leaf only made as much power as the U.S.-spec Leaf Plus, instead relying more on its suspension upgrades for improved performance. But with even more powerful competition from Hyundai, Ford and Chevy, and the fact that more powerful motors don’t require updated emissions equipment, we would hope that Nissan would add more grunt to stay competitive.
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