Cool! It’s an electric Nissan ice-cream van Ice-creams vans,...

Cool! It’s an electric Nissan ice-cream van

Ice-creams vans, much as we love them, need to clean up their act. Running those diesel smog-factories all day, to power their refrigerators? Near the lungs of our children? This is 2019. Surely we can do better.

Nissan thinks so. It’s teamed up with ice-cream maker Mackie’s of Scotland to make this: an e-NV200 electric ice-cream van.

It’s fully kitted out with a soft-serve machine, freezer drawer and drinks fridge, all powered by one of Nissan’s reclaimed ‘Roam’ battery – cells living a second life after previous service in a Leaf electric car.

They’re charged up from a regular 230-volt wall socket, or topped-up by solar panels on the roof.

At the beach. Meanwhile, the van retains its 40kWh battery pack and 124-mile range.

You’d imagine a silent e-van would benefit from playing a cheery musical tune as it goes about its business. Instead of a speaker playing a jingle to attract customers, the concept van “has a smart button that generates a tweet of the van’s precise location using the global addressing service What3Words”.

And once you’ve been served, you cough up with contactless payment.

Better than coughing up a load of ancient Transit van exhaust, though. We like this idea.



www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/cool-its-electric-nissan-ice-cream-van