The vehicle, one of only two ever made, was handed over at Nissan dealer Glyn Hopkin in Milton Keynes, having recently completed a similar trial with FedEx in London. Ahead of the production vehicle’s launch at the end of 2013, Nissan has mirrored the project in Japan, including supplying an electric NV200 to the Japan Post Service in Yokohama.

James Douglas, corporate sales director at Nissan GB, said the trial is aimed at finding out how the van functions in real-world usage with multiple drivers. The development process is at the stage where on-board systems can still be tweaked to improve performance and range to suit the user.

It continues a rapidly growing relationship between Nissan and the utility company, which started with the launch of the LEAF last year. ‘We sold almost no cars or vans to British Gas until the LEAF came,’ said Douglas ‘That opened the door to selling them some cars, and it opened the door to talking about commercial vehicles. We have sold them NV200s because they’re so low in CO2, we’ve also sold them some cross-managed products like Primastar.

‘None of that business was available to us before because we didn’t have the strength of relationship we do now. British Gas from their side are interested in the technology – they have a desire to reduce their carbon footprint to zero if they can, and we have the ability to deliver that for them.’