Nissan Leaf checks in at London's Gatwick Airport

In 2010, over 31.3 million people passed through London's Gatwick Airport. Not even one of them attempted to drive through the airport's North Terminal in a Nissan Leaf, or, for that matter, any other road-worthy passenger vehicle. That changed when Stewart Wingate, chief executive officer at Gatwick Airport, kicked off the travel hub's partnership with Nissan by driving the electric Leaf through the check-in point at the North Terminal.

Concurrent with piloting the Leaf through the concourse, Wingate announced that Gatwick (London's second busiest international airport after Heathrow) has installed eight public-use charging stations to support the deployment of plug-in vehicles. Wingate told Book FHR that:

We are driving a program to incentivize the use of cleaner vehicles across the airport community and have set ourselves an ambitious target to push our own use of low emission vehicles to 20 percent by 2015.

For at least the next year, motorists can use the charging points for free and won't be required to pay for parking for up to four hours while their vehicles get juiced up.

[Source: Book FHR via Nissan-Leaf]