Nissan's electric future has cars charge themselves and make you cash

Home / News / Future shock: Nissan wants electric cars that charge themselves

Roaming around for a plug-in point to top up your electric car could soon be a thing of the past.

Nissan has shared its vision of an electric future at the Geneva Motor Show, and there are no cables in sight.

Instead, we’ll be using a mix of solar panels, wireless EV chargers and autonomous driving to charge your car – and your home as well.

Imagine leaving your car to park itself in a specially adapted bay, with an underground electricity grid recharging it overnight. Once it’s fully topped up, it would automatically swap places with other cars to give them some juice too.

Hopefully this would go hand-in-hand with a Tesla-style Summon mode, otherwise the future is going to be filled with people wondering why their car isn’t where they left it the night before.

Cash in a flash

Your electric car could even make you a bit of cash on the side. Nissan’s new France offices already let drivers plug in and draw electricity from the grid at off-peak times, then sell back the stored energy later.

It uses ‘second-life’ batteries that have been removed from cars, and could eventually be rolled out to homes too.

Future-gazing is all well and good, but we’re more excited about the new 60kWh battery. Nissan’s working on it now, and could boost the Leaf’s maximum range to 341 miles. Once it gets the price right, it should be rolled out to future Nissan cars.