Rudolf goes green

Low Emission Vehicles 

Take a trip to Sunderland and you might bump into a new look Rudolf. His nose may still be red, but with a little help from Nissan he'll be using the power of electricity to guide the sleigh this year. The sparkle in his eyes comes from a Nissan Leaf and is in celebration of the 250,000th model to roll off the UK production line.

The Nissan Leaf has been built in Sunderland for more than a decade and was the world's first mass-market electric vehicle. Fast forward 10 years and a quarter of a million of Nissan's brilliant electric car have now left the factory.

Alan Johnson, Vice President Manufacturing at Nissan Sunderland Plant, said: “Passing a quarter of a million Nissan LEAFs is a tremendous milestone, and demonstrates the electric vehicle manufacturing expertise we have built up at our plant over the past decade.”

In 2021 Nissan's Sunderland Plant was also announced as the home of EV36ZERO, a £1bn flagship electric vehicle manufacturing ecosystem bringing together electric vehicles, renewable energy, and battery production. When you go this green it should go without saying that Santa is likely to approve. This year saw the electrification of every model produced at the Sunderland plant with the launch of the latest Qashqai and Juke, so what better way to demonstrate the power of all that electricity than by using one of your cars to power your Christmas lights?

Demonstrating the ability of the Nissan Leaf to act as a mobile power station, the lights on the 32-foot Christmas tree and its shimmering reindeer are being powered by the vehicle's battery, using V2X technology – or, as Nissan decided to call this particular example, V2X-MAS TREE.

V2X is Nissan's name for its vehicle-to-grid capability, sometimes known as vehicle-to-building or vehicle-to-everything. This clever piece of technology allows an EV to be fully integrated into the electricity grid and help improve grid capability to handle renewable power as well as managing energy more efficiently. Essentially, it puts energy management in the hands of the driver by turning the vehicle into a mobile energy hub. It's the hidden benefit of EV technology, and while it's still early days for this part of the EV plan the benefits are plain to see. You can use your car to store electricity in the vehicle's battery and then feed it back to the grid, or straight into your home when needed.

It's not just a useful idea for lighting up your Christmas tree either. Given the current cost of electricity, wouldn't it be nice to sign up for a cheaper EV tariff so you can charge your car when the cost is less and then tap into that energy to help power your home at more expensive times?

Look at leasing yourself an EV leasing yourself an EV and you might be able to save on more than just the cost of a tank of fuel.

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