Green machine delivers the goods

Electric van an ideal company workhorse

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 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

that under less than ideal conditions. You might if you kept yourself to slow town driving, but not if meteorological conditions conspire against you. I planned a 50-mile round trip but the mercury was up at 30C and if there’s one thing that savages range in an electric vehicle it’s air conditioning.

Of course, you can leave it off and open the windows but that’s not particularly effective when it’s so hot outside. Besides, we’re used to it and doing without it is a big compromise.

Yes, I got home, but with only about 15 miles to spare. That’s a range of only 65 miles.

The e-NV200 van in Tekna spec has a touchscreen infotainment system that includes sat nav that has a function that finds the nearest charging point for you. For some bizarre reason, when I asked it for my local point it gave me one in south-east London – 13 miles away. Odd, considering there’s one at my local Waitrose not a quarter of a mile away. So I went there to recharge only to find an old BMW parked in the bay. If you use a CHAdeMO charging point you can get your battery up to 80% in around 40 minutes. A wall charger at home takes 7hr 30mins and a domestic socket 21 hours.

As predicted, the e-NV200 is a far better van than people carrier. The ride and handling are acceptable in this configuration, but in a car, or the Combi, just irritating.

The e-NV200 can take up to 705kg or two Euro pallets in the back and is easy to load with two sliding doors as well as those at the rear. We put our bikes and a couple of stand-up paddle boards in the back. You really look environmentally aware when you go paddle boarding in an electric van.

I’ve never felt so righteous. Which makes the e-NV200 a good idea for a company that needs to be seen to be kind to nature. They’ll be paying £21,881 plus VAT for their Tekna-spec e-NV200.

That’s against £30,595 for the Combi passenger version with the government grant deducted.

And that is way too much – even for a super-green image outside the school gates.