Needing the right tool for the job often requires ingenuity. That's exactly the case at Nissan's Stanfield, Arizona proving grounds. The team of engineers needed a truck-like vehicle to haul test gear, but something that got great gas mileage around the 3,050-acre complex.
Meet Sparky, the wild idea a few Nissan engineers cooked up while trying to solve the dilemma. The team started with a stock Nissan LEAF, the all-electric hatchback and combined it with several parts scavenged off a Nissan Frontier pickup. The combination is something of a Frankenstein, but it gets the job done.
Not using a drop of fuel, little Sparky makes his way across the grounds and helps out with testing of future Nissan products. "I needed a project for a team building activity so we can bring the team together. We had a need for a truck. Something to drive around, a shop truck," says Roland Schellenberg, one of Nissan's masterminds behind Sparky.
Helping build Sparky was Arnold Moulinet. "I went home and stayed up till like four in the morning making all kinds of designs for what would work," he says. "We basically got the stock Leaf, and after reviewing a bunch of designs of pickup trucks that we have here at Nissan, we decided to go with a Frontier bed."
Now the Nissan development team has an electrically powered mini truck that functions as park of the team. "It's something that we all put together," says Schellenberg. "We all share, so it has a little bit of everybody in there."
Nissan Leaf "Sparky" originally appeared on topspeed.com on Friday, 19 September 2014 13:00 EST.
read more
No comments:
Post a Comment