► ‘World’s first’ glow-in-the-dark car
► Sadly a publicity stunt for now
► Created by inventor Hamish Scott
Check out this bright idea: a glow-in-the-dark Nissan Leaf electric car. Sadly, you can’t yet tick a luminous paint option box on the EV’s order form, but we rather like the idea nonetheless.
Nissan teamed up with inventor Hamish Scott, who made the Starpath glowing footpath.
The Leaf is covered in the same luminous paint that absorbs solar energy by day and then releases it for up to 10 hours overnight. It’s made entirely from organic materials, including strontium aluminate that provides the gentle, eerie glow.
So just make sure you leave your Leaf outside in the sun, alright? Park in an underground car park and you’ll just be driving around in a dull, flat off-white EV.
Why has Nissan bothered to make a glow-in-the-dark Leaf?
It’s a bit of harmless fun, designed to reflect the way typical customers trickle-charge their cars at home overnight, absorbing energy from the grid (and, in a few isolated cases, solar panels).
It’s not the first time Nissan’s done a Leaf publicity stunt. Remember the Leaf pick-up truck and Nismo racer?
Tellingly, there are hints that Nissan could bring the paint job to production. ‘Various third-party companies have applied non-organic glow-in-the-dark paint to vehicles before but Nissan is the first car maker to directly apply such technology,’ the company said.
‘Nissan’s unique paint, if made commercially available, would last for 25 years.’ Which is probably several times longer than actual the battery service life on any electric car…