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Nissan has revealed a concept variant of its Navara pickup at the Hannover Motor Show, a biennial showcase of commercial vehicles. The Navara Dark Sky concept functions as a mobile observatory and it's essentially an uprated Navara with a trailer full of telescopes. Developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the Navara Dark Sky is intended to take astronomers far beyond the city lights into wildernesses to allow them to make their cosmic observations in areas free from light pollution.
Telescopes are sensitive instruments and that trailer is temperature and vibration controlled to ensure that it doesn't need to be recalibrated every time the driver/astronomer takes it up a bumpy mountain track. According to Nissan: "Once at the desired, often hard-to-reach destination, the trailer module's mechanized roof can be opened to focus the telescope on the night sky. Using a 40-centimeter (primary) mirror, it has the ability to give detailed views beyond the rings of Saturn, to distant galaxies, nebulae and supernovas."
Both the trailer and the Navara feature EV battery packs, derived from Nissan's extensive work in the field of EV technology, which are undoubtedly essential for running the observatory, but also present a pretty useful feature on a commercial vehicle like the Navara where they might ordinarily be used for powering things like fridges or cement mixers. Taking the practical astronomy theme further, the Navara's interior features reflective orange piping on the seats to alleviate the need for the kind of white light that would disrupt the astronomer's vision. For the same reason, the interior lighting on both the Navara and the trailer is red (think photographic darkroom), as red light is far less glaring than white.
This is all certainly very nifty, but what are the more down-to-Earth applications for all this? According to Paolo d'Ettore, head of the LCV Business Unit at Nissan: "In Europe almost a quarter of our Navara customers regularly tow. Using Nissan Intelligent Mobility technologies, we wanted to construct the most advanced and capable pickup to meet their needs. The result is the Nissan Navara Dark Sky concept, and in future we intend to make towing a simpler and more confident activity for all our customers." And here we come to the crux of things - it's all about towing.
The Navara Dark Sky features an updated version of Nissan's ProPilot driver assistance tech to keep everything nice and stable and straight when towing trailers. There's also enhanced Blind Spot Warning and Intelligent Towing Hitch Alignment, which allows the car to autonomously line itself up with a trailer to make for ease of hook-up, something not too dissimilar to Active Parking. All these technologies will assuredly be of use to Nissan customers who aren't astronomers...
It wasn't all final frontier stuff for Nissan at Hannover though. We love camper vans here at CompleteCar.ie and were quite taken with Nissan's demonstration of camper conversions for its NV200, NV300 and e-NV200 vans, each something along the lines of Volkswagen's California and built by Spanish camper-converters BRAM Technologies. The vans all feature an integrated cooker, refrigerator and sink with running water and the largest, the NV300, can accommodate four people by the addition of a second double-bed in the raised ceiling.
Also on display was Nissan's upgraded electric e-NV200 van. The e-NV200 has been a pioneer of Vehicle-To-Grid technology, which allows owners to use their vehicles' batteries to store electricity, to connect to and power their business or even sell back excess electricity to help balance their local energy grid. According to Gareth Dunsmore, Electric Vehicle Director with Nissan Europe: "With the van fleet size on Europe's roads growing rapidly due to the 'Amazon generation' online ordering, it's critical that this impact is mitigated by using smart, zero emission last mile delivery vans such as the Nissan e-NV200."