ELECTRIC cars are coming and next week I’ll be amongst the press corps driving the first family EV to go on sale in Britain.
Nissan is holding a LEAF first-drive event in That London to give a taster of the car that has already earned plenty of rightful attention in the UK.
This is after the top news that it’s to be built here, in Sunderland, in numbers of around 50,000 units a year. A great vote of confidence for the super-efficient plant in Washington, and one thoroughly deserved by all the diligent staff there.
Of course, the news of this made the headlines a few weeks back. And it was watching Sky News with my mum that made the LEAF even more of a game-changer for me.
‘You know, I reckon my next car will be electric.’
Whoa, mother! Where did that come from?
Through, it seems, watching the LEAF announcement, liking the fact that it’s super-green, finding the sustainability aspect interesting and being especially drawn to the overnight charging. Electric, it seems has already charged up my mum.
The appeal of overnight charging is especially interesting. Far from this being a barrier to ownership, it’s actually an attraction for my mum – she has a garage, never covers more than 100 miles in a day, hates visiting petrol stations. To avoid them, yet always have a ‘full’ fuel tank each day, makes electric cars a positive boon in her eyes.
She also liked the silence the reporter spoke of, and the fact, that as it’s being built in Britain and will be out soon, it’s suddenly much more ‘real’ and viable than it was. Electric is here, and she likes what she sees.
To have such an early adopter that’s not an IT professional or green tech company CEO, but a housewife in the Midlands, amazed me. But it also shows that, finally, the electric car future spoken of for decades by the industry may be finally becoming a reality.
Course, it means I’ve another brief for when I go and drive the LEAF soon: tell me, Nissan, when is the city car EV coming, will it have a big boot and will it fit in mum’s annoyingly small garage?
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Interesting that the term “zero emission” is still all over the background on those photos.
The ASA have already stomped all over Renault UK for using this term as “the ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Code rules 5.1.1, 5.1.2 (Misleading advertising) and 5.2.1 (Misleading advertising- Evidence) and 5.2.6 (Misleading advertising-Environmental claims.)”
http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/Adjudications/2010/3/Renault-UK-Ltd/TF_ADJ_48291.aspx
Based on this, it will be interesting to see how Nissan market the Leaf in the UK market. Great perspective about your mother though, does she know how much it will cost yet?
VERY interesting: The image in the piece was taken at the Japanese Motor Show in Tokyo last year (2009). So, prior to this ASA ruling, and in another country presumably not covered by the ASA regs.
As the generic term for EVs at the moment is ‘ZEV’, I wonder what the effect of the ASA could be?
Great point you make, Ben – many thanks! Wonder if anyone else has any thoughts? I’ll be sure to ask Nissan next week, too.
Richard.