Third evaluation to include more vehicles
In July of last year we reported that Nissan gave the Japanese Postal Service a Nissan NV200 EV for testing in a two month evaluation. This was Nissan’s first real-world look at how the van would behave in the wild.
In December, we followed up with another article as Nissan provided FedEx with an evaluation unit in Europe, also for a two month time frame. These evaluations must have built Nissan’s confidence in their test program as they have now expanded it to include more vehicles in another test in Japan.
Nissan has just announced that AEON Retail Company will use the Nissan NV200 EV as delivery vehicles within the Tokyo metropolitan area. No mention of how many vans will be used in this evaluation, but the plural indicates more than one. The previous use with the Japanese Postal Service and FedEx must have been useful, as this evaluation period has been reduced to a one month time frame. Perhaps two units will be involved, which should provide similar data points in a shorter time frame.
Electric vehicles (EVs) could be a significant boon for many types of businesses that have need for economical delivery or courier service vehicles. Quite often, an NV200 EV type of vehicle makes many trips of short distance throughout the day. With a fast charge station at their home base, these vehicles could easily provide 50,000 miles per year of low cost of operation performance. With no oil and filter changes to perform, the core maintenance of a high mileage work horse, significant maintenance cost reductions and time use productivity increases would also be of benefit. Our sense is that once these businesses have been properly introduced to this technology, it will be embraced enthusiastically as a significant contributor to a more efficient business operation.