US-based company J.D. Power has recognized Nissan’s 100-percent electric vehicle Nissan LEAF as the highest rated redesign for its inaugural J.D. Power Engineering Awards, presented at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2019 WCX World Congress Experience.
Chris Reed, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Nissan North America, said, “This award is a credit to hundreds of Nissan technical professionals here in the U.S., as well as in Japan.”
“Any vehicle redesign requires a massive amount of coordination across many functional teams, and I am very proud of the excellent vehicle this effort produced which has been recognized by J.D. Power,” Reed adds.
The J.D. Power Engineering Awards were presented at the annual SAE Awards Ceremony held at Cobo Center in Detroit.
Last month J.D. Power announced the creation of two new engineering achievement awards: Highest-Rated Vehicle All-New and Highest-Rated Redesigned Vehicle for the 2018 model year.
More than 400,000 Nissan LEAFs have been sold globally. The LEAF underwent a complete redesign for its 2018 model year and a 62 kWh version capable of up to 226 miles* of range was added to the 2019 lineup.
“While J.D. Power has become known for benchmarking quality in all phases of the automotive industry for the past 50-plus years, we wanted to recognize the achievements of the engineers who translate concept vehicles into practical road vehicles,” said Doug Betts, Senior Vice President of Global Automotive at J.D. Power.
“Nissan launched its first LEAF vehicle in 2010, and their engineers were able to utilize the lessons learned from that vehicle and successfully apply improvements to the redesigned vehicle,” explained Betts.
Here’s the video of the Nissan LEAF: