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Engineers at Nissan’s Arizona proving grounds have created a one-off pickup truck variant of the Nissan Leaf.
The Leaf truck was apparently built to haul people and goods around Nissan’s campus, but is apparently “not very tough”. I can’t say its terribly appealing to me, but I’m sure there are a few of you who would gladly disagree.
28 Comments on “Behold, The Leafamino...”
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That thing is nasty-looking.
It is terrible. The bulbous rear doesn’t take to a bed or a tailgate at all.
Shut up and take my money!
Ya know, for some reason, this might actually work in cities.
One thing I’ve always wondered is why manufacturers don’t come up with an easily slide-in, slide-out battery system. That way, one could stop at your local Delect-Co station and simply switch batteries. No worries about replacing worn out ones (that’s built into the charge each time you refresh them), and refueling time has the potential to be even less than that required to fill ‘er up.
Because the battery packs weigh a few hundred pounds and cost a few thousand dollars. Plus, I hardly trust to exchange a propane tank, let alone the battery system for my car.
True enough, but an exchange system is still something that might actually prove viable. This would require some sort of standardization amongst the manufacturers (horrors) along with agreements on battery ownership (or something similar). Given the correct engineering, methinks weight alone would be something we could tackle successfully.
If this won’t work, we’ll have to await higher capacity batteries capable of recharging in 15-30 mins or so.
@Da Coyote:
You’re referring to what Better Place tried. They only gained a toe hold in Israel, and eventually went bankrupt.
Their problems were many:
1. They were about a decade late to the EV party. If they had managed to corral the EV mfrs into standardization much earlier, they might have stood a chance.
2. Billing is tricky, depending on how one prices the fillup, the overhead, battery degradation, etc.
3. Very high overhead. You need expensive inventory sitting around waiting for customers, and it can’t all be different form factors.
4. Business model. If you’re going to serve commuters (not like the Supercharger network), it turns out that commuters typically charge at home. I would never take my Leaf to such a depot, only to risk procuring a beat down battery.
I thought Tesla have a battery swap option at their superchargers ?
They’ve talked about it, but I don’t think it’s a reality yet. I believe their swap program will be limited to a few Supercharger sites, and of course, will only work with Teslas.
Where’s the gun rack?
Maybe a tazer rack would be more appropriate?
Good one, MCS.
Perfect for indoor landscaping!
You know what… That is pretty cool! When I saw the title I was expecting to see some hacked-up salvage title Leaf but the fact that the Nissan engineers did it is cool.
I wish we even got the gas pickup built on the Leaf/Versa/Dacia platform:
http://www.nissan.co.za/en/web/models/NP200/Overview/78419_273424.htm
1: This is a one off, right? One’s enough.
2: Somehow someone managed to make a LEAF look goofier. I wasn’t sure that was possible.
There is your ecologically friendly small pickup truck with lots of torque America.
Too bad it’s not brown.
Oh Derek, stop trolling the jihadists.
Big Al and PCH will be here shortly to argue about the implications of LEAF Trucks in Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on comparison to previous utes from Holden and Ford. Vulpine can interject sporadically about towing capacity implications of battery packs within FWD contexts.
I’m just fantasizing about rolling into my village’s yard waste dump with one of these. And of repeatedly doing that every week since I could only tote one 55 gal. container at a time.
I find the Leaf to look wretched but I *DO* so love tiny little Trucklets……
-Nate
A funky little trucklet based on a funky little car with funky propulsion.
Oooh, oooh, do the Nissan Z next!
It’s adorable.
It’s like a 2014 version of the Rabbit pickup, but with a smaller bed. I’d rather have a Rabbit pickup.
Based on previous comments about “smaller” pickups I expect to see more posts about “…for the same $$$ you could buy a full-size F-150…”
Not that it’s related at all but that’s seems to be the mindset of many…
The bed would be a perfect place for a 2 cyl diesel range extender! :-)
Edit: This is reminiscent of the VW Type II flatbed.
They styling kind of reminds me of Suzuki’s short lived x90
I suppose this could be useful for work – I work in IT for a university, so we have golf carts, vans, and an xB that we use for delivering computers and equipment. Although a covered roof would be more useful – maybe they can make a Leaf panel van.
That looks so much better than the hatchback. Probably borderline useless as a pick-up, except if you’re carrying everything strapped to the top of the bed rather than into it… but it actually looks interesting.