The funeral directors at Leverton & Sons made headlines recently with this, likely to be the first Nissan Leaf hearse ever made. We checked for something similar in Japan and came out dry. But once they catch wind of this, Leafs will start sprouting up around funeral homes.
A zero-emissions car taking you on your final journey seems perfect. The electric motor is so silent that Nissan added a sort of speaker so that pedestrians wouldn't walk in front of the car. It's also very polite not to cover people with diesel fumes at a funeral.
However, it's not perfect. Most hearses are based on cars that are already big, like the Volvo S80, the Mercedes E-Class and sometimes the Ford Mondeo. Companies that specialize in this kind of work come and tear off the roof, replacing it with a frame. The vehicle is then turned into a mobile display case.
They've done part of that with the Nissan Leaf. However, during their collaboration with Brahms Electric Vehicles, Leverton & Sons opted not to extend the body of the car further back. Thus, the Leaf maintains much of its original proportions and the two doors on the driver side are in place.
The stripped out car has been modified in such a way that casket occupies the entire length, all the way to the dash. The passenger side doors have been replaced by a glass viewing panel. A beam stretches down the middle of the car to separate the casket from the driver.
Brahms Electric Vehicles has built three examples already. Compared to a regular Mercedes hearse, it's about a third of the cost to build. Between that, the cost of charging compared to filling up and not having to pay any taxes, customers are going to feel the benefits. But what we would have done is to start off with the Renault Fluence ZE, which is longer and cheaper to buy.
We want to treat this story as an oddity, but with several cities around the world trying to ban even gasoline cars, EV hearses will soon become an everyday occurrence. There's already a Tesla Model S that does this job!
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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