Green machine delivers the goods

NISSAN produced the world’s first all-electric seven-seat people carrier when it slung seats in its E-NV200 van while adding a bit of posh to the front cabin.

It’s called the E-NV200 Combi. Now Nissan has upgraded the vehicle by fitting the LEAF’S 40kwh battery in place of the original 27kwh unit to up the range.

Sounds like a great idea. The only snag is that the Combi is much more van than family car. There’s barely any soft touch plastic in the front, you get leaf spring suspension in the back and the whole thing feels exactly what it is – a van converted to take people.

There are too many conventional people carriers that do the job far better for less money, such as the latest Citroen Berlingo which is also van based but hides its parentage far better than the Nissan does.

Electric vans make a huge amount of sense mainly because it’s possible to plan out the work to suit the range available. That does limit their use to regular delivery work rather than say, courier work or as builder’s van Nissan E-NV200 Tekna light van

Price: £21,881 plus VAT Engine: electric motor, 108bhp 0-62mph: 14.0sec WLTP range: 124 miles

where it’s less easy to predict a day’s mileage. And since we can’t recommend the passengercarrying Combi to anyone other than a fervent green, we’re testing the van version here.

I very nearly made a drastic miscalculation during our test. The bigger battery gives the Nissan a range of 124 miles under the newly introduced WLTP drive cycle. Good luck with achieving

An investigation by Trading Standards carried out over the last five years found that 139 of 152 suppliers of part-worn tyres were selling ones that were illegal and unsafe. Inspectors found tyres with nails in them and with other signs of damage.In my youth, when I was particularly skint I would buy second-hand tyres – but these days I wouldn’t dream of doing it.Modern motors are pretty safe, so there’s not much sense in compromising the only part of your car that is actually in contact with the road.