Last week was a great week for Nissan. After what felt like a long wait for some, the handing out of the cars has finally begun! Here’s a summary of the people and companies who have started turning over a new LEAF.
Monday 21st of March, Amsterdam
Prince Maurits was lucky enough to receive the very first Nissan LEAF in Amsterdam. The Prince and the Formula E-team will drive the LEAF. The Formula E-team invests in infrastructure, batteries and the availability of vehicles and helps stimulate breakthroughs in electric mobility in The Netherlands. The Formula E-team is a collaboration of Dutch trade and industry, institutes and administration.
Prince Maurits met Bart van Thienen (Nissan Nederland) at the Nissan dealer in Amsterdam on Monday morning. At the Nissan Visscher dealer the Prince had the pleasure to be introduced to the LEAF. From the dealer the Prince drove the LEAF to his house, where the recently placed charging station was waiting for her new friend, a blue LEAF. To see the start of this new friendship, check out this short film.
Wednesday 23rd of March, Amsterdam
On this historic spring day, 18 Nissan LEAFS were awarded by Leaseplan at the Nissan Visscher Dealer, to their proud new owners. De city of Amsterdam, BAM Property development and Rijkswaterstaat (ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) are the first companies to drive their LEAFs on the Dutch roads.
However, before they were allowed to hit the roads, Nissan gave a workshop where they explained how the LEAFs like to be treated and handled with care. Special attention was drawn to the Car Wings system, a new smartphone app where the driver can see the remaining capacity of the battery via a personal webpage. The driver can also use this app as a ‘remote control’, for example you can program the car to start charging or even turn the air conditioning on before you get in. Perfect for those cold winter days!
Thursday 24th of March, Amsterdam
What goes hand in hand with an electric car…? Of course the charging station! So whilst the cars were handed out to the proud new owners, Lonneke Tabak (The New Motion’s charging queen) and Arie van den Bos (Mobilis Telecom) drove around the city in a Nissan LEAF to test the charging stations for the next LEAF drivers.
The charging stations were simply tested by plugging the LEAF in the charging station, and waiting for it to start charging. The tests began with a slow start; the first charging station didn’t work! After trying numerous options to get it to work, they realised that the LEAF was simply programmed to start charging at a different time. One small tip: If this happens to you as well, first check if the charging timer is programmed correctly before you start unscrewing the station. This might cause Arie a small heart attack… We are happy to say that after the slow start to the day, all the charging stations worked like a charm!
With all this great news about the Nissan LEAFS and the charging stations we do realise that there are many of you out there that have not received the LEAF yet. We are all working as hard as we can to get them to you as soon as possible. Maybe we can all think back to the times when our mothers would say ‘Patience is gold’.
Tags: Amsterdam, elektrische auto, Nissan LEAF, Snelladen
