Nissan Sakura 2024 Review — The Cheapest Way Into an Electric Car in Sri Lanka

The smallest, cheapest, most sensible EV you’ve probably never considered

The Nissan Sakura is a kei car that happens to be electric — a vehicle built to Japan’s smallest regulated class, with a battery to match. It launched in 2022, was co-developed with Mitsubishi (the near-identical eK X EV is its twin), and promptly won Japan Car of the Year 2022–2023. In Japan it became the country’s best-selling EV almost overnight, because it answered a question most carmakers ignore: what’s the cheapest way to put someone in an electric car?

For Sri Lanka, that question matters more than anywhere. The per-kWh EV import duty means the tax on an electric car scales with battery size — and the Sakura has the smallest battery in the market. The result is the cheapest electric car you can land here. Whether that’s a bargain or a false economy depends entirely on understanding what you’re buying.

The powertrain — small on purpose

The Sakura’s numbers are modest by design:

• A ~20 kWh battery — tiny next to a bZ4X’s ~71 kWh or a BYD Seal’s ~82 kWh
• A 47 kW (64 ps) motor — kei-class power, with the instant low-speed torque that makes any EV feel lively in town
• A WLTC range rated around 180 km, which in real Sri Lankan conditions — heat, AC, traffic — is honestly about 150 km, often less

That range number is the whole story. 150 km is a comfortable day of Colombo commuting, school runs and errands with charge to spare, recharged overnight at home. It is not a Colombo-to-Kandy car, let alone a Colombo-to-Jaffna one. The Sakura is a city EV, full stop — and within that brief, 150 km is plenty.

Living with it in Sri Lanka — a city car, charged at home

The Sakura makes sense under one condition: you can charge it at home. Plug it in overnight off a home wall box or even a domestic socket, and you wake up every day to a full “tank” for the cost of a few units of electricity. You never visit a fuel station; you never visit an emission test centre because a pure EV is exempt; your revenue licence is charged at the 50% electric rate. The running cost is the lowest of any car we cover, by a distance.

In traffic the kei dimensions are a genuine pleasure. The Sakura is short and narrow, so it parks anywhere, slots into gaps, and threads through Colombo congestion with none of the stress of placing a wide car. It’s light, quiet and smooth, with one-pedal driving that suits stop-go traffic perfectly.

The flip side is equally clear. Without home charging, a short-range EV makes little sense — you’d spend your life nursing it to public chargers. And the kei-class size that’s a joy in the city is tight as a sole family vehicle: four people fit, but it’s a small car by design. The JDM cars also use the CHAdeMO DC fast-charging standard, which is a non-issue for home AC charging but worth checking if you plan to lean on public chargers.

The landed-price case — where the tiny battery pays off

This is the Sakura’s trump card. Because the EV import duty is levied per kWh, the smallest battery in the market carries the smallest duty. The maths:

• A 2024 Sakura FOBs in Japan around JPY 1.2–2.0M depending on grade and mileage — kei-EV money
• Landed in Sri Lanka, the small-battery EV duty treatment brings it into roughly the LKR 6–9M band

That puts a genuine electric car in the same territory as a used petrol kei or a modest first-car hatchback — except this one costs a fraction to run and skips the emission test forever. For a buyer who wants the lowest possible cost of motoring and can live within the range, nothing else lands this cheaply with an electric drivetrain. We walk through the exact duty calculation in our EV permit and per-kWh duty guide.

What to check on a used import

Beyond the standard auction-sheet checks, the Sakura-specific due diligence is refreshingly simple:

• Battery state of health — a ~20 kWh pack on a 2023–2024 car has done little work; request a diagnostic read at pre-shipment inspection. And because the pack is small, it’s the cheapest of any EV to service if it ever needs it — the battery-health fear that hangs over bigger EVs is at its smallest here.
• Charging setup — confirm the home charging arrangement you’ll use, and CHAdeMO compatibility if you want public fast charging.
• Genuine mileage and grade — a high-grade car with a verified low odometer is the buy, as always.

Who it’s for

The Sakura is for the household that wants a dedicated city car and can charge at home: the second car for the daily commute and the school run, or the single-person Colombo runabout that never needs to leave town. For that buyer it’s close to perfect — cheapest to buy, cheapest to run, easiest to park, and electric.

It is not for the one-car family, the buyer who regularly drives to the provinces, or anyone without off-street charging. Those buyers should look at a hybrid or, if they’re set on electric and need real range, the BYD Seal or bZ4X instead. The Sakura asks you to respect its limits; do that, and it rewards you more than almost anything else in the market.

The verdict

The Sakura is the cheapest, smallest, most single-minded EV you can import — and that focus is its strength. Within the city, charged at home, it’s brilliant and absurdly cheap to live with. Ask it to be a family’s only car, or to reach the far provinces, and it can’t. Buy it for exactly what it is — a home-charged city runabout — and it’s one of the smartest-value imports on the market.

Get a quote and we’ll check battery health and charging compatibility on a specific Sakura, and lay out the full landed cost against the cheapest petrol and hybrid alternatives.

Read also

• Best electric cars in Sri Lanka — where the Sakura sits among importable EVs
• bZ4X 2024 vs Nissan Sakura 2024 — the do-everything family EV versus the ultra-cheap kei city car
• BYD Seal 2024 review — the long-range electric sedan at the other end of the EV decision
• The EV permit and per-kWh duty — why the smallest battery lands the cheapest
• Revenue licence & road tax — the 50% electric rate and the emission-test exemption an EV enjoys