The Nissan Leaf is pure electric, pure environmentalism, and pure birth control. I can give credit to the company for not half-assing about and going full electric, and making the car useable. But unlike it’s most likely competitor, the Tesla Model S, the Nissan creates all the excitement of pole-dancing night at the old folks’ home. Oddly enough, it even looks like the little blue pills being passed around at that party. They make a great zero-fuel car for a city or suburban landscape, but that’s about all the nice things that I can say about it.
But a couple of workers at Nissan’s technical center in Stanfield, Arizona saw past the car…or at least saw the chop saw in the corner and had a creative thought. See, they needed a vehicle with a bed to ferry items around the tech center’s campus, but didn’t want to use a Titan or Frontier to do the job, so instead this Leaf went under the knife and got hacked up into a ute. There’s some bits of Titan and Frontier used in the conversion, like the cab’s sheet metal and the tubes along the bed rails, and the bed is useful enough; it’s not going to win awards for cargo capacity anytime soon. But it’s an interesting take on what the Leaf can do, and begrudgingly I have to admit I like the little trucklet. Since it will spend most of it’s time on the campus it makes perfect sense from both a utility and efficiency standpoint, and this might be the only way I would ever see myself in a Leaf.
Don’t expect Nissan to even study this creation for production, but take a look at it and see if you aren’t seeing a cool little modern take on a Kei truck.
Great idea! Let’s turn an electric “turd” into a UTE and get even less performance after we put a load (a case of lite beer and a bag gluten free chips) into the bed. Polish, polish and polish some more and you have a shiny…
“Not as bad as you think??” No it’s worse!
I actually like it. It needs a better drive-train (like a 1ltr turbo diesel), but the overall execution is nice
Add some more wheelbase and a second battery pack and you just might have a winner.
Kill it with FIRE!!
Keep expecting a Prius pickup from Toyota. Too often my short bed Silverado isn’t long enough, what would good would that tiny bad be good for?
That makes a better competitor to a milk cart.
So they have, in essence, built a $30,000 golf cart. Now that’s innovation…
I’m with those guys, its cr@p.