Local building contractors Crestmoor Construction, who work closely with Somerset and Dorset County Councils with highways maintenance, were originally contacted by Shane Rendall at FJ Chalke Wincanton regarding Nissan’s commercial vehicles. After a conversation with the Director of Crestmoor Construction, Kenny Higgins, it became apparent that they were more interested in reducing the company’s carbon footprint. This is important to them because they work so closely with the county councils who are required to greatly reduce their own carbon footprint by 2015. For them this means using contractors who make efforts to boost their green credentials.

The Nissan LEAF achieves this perfectly, NO exhaust means ZERO emissions. Mr Higgins was also very interested in taking advantage of the LEAFs other big benefit, being 100% tax deductable in the first year. The car is used to travel between sites and for surveying, the have made a huge saving on fuel costs, this is due to a comparison made on their previous vehicle. It is worked out over 3 years and compares the LEAF with their Nissan Pathfinder automatic and covers their average mileage of 500 miles a month. The results of which are astounding.

Nissan Pathfinder 2.5DCi Auto Fuel per month – £320
Fuel for the Year – £3840
Over 3 Years – £11,520
3 Years worth of Road Tax – £1,500
Running cost £13,020
This figure does not include hefty servicing and insurance costs.

Nissan LEAF
1 full charge – £1.47 (off peak)
2 charges a week – £2.94
Monthly charging cost – £11.76
Yearly charging cost – £141.12
Total for 3 years in electric – £423.36 (off peak) or £820.80 (on peak)
This figure does not include insurance. The car is tax exempt and servicing will be considerably cheaper.

So using a LEAF saves them £11,096 on fuel alone which proves that LEAF was the answer to drastically bring down running costs and improve their carbon footprint, and now they have achieved this even more than they thought was possible. To promote their green credentials whilst out and about on the road, they had the car decaled with their logo.