Tag Archives | electric car

Review: 2012 Nissan Leaf SL

By on February 17, 2012 in Reviews

By Kevin Miller

I’ve got to admit, my review of the Nissan Leaf has turned out quite a bit differently than I had expected it to. I’m a bit of a self-proclaimed “range anxiety” sufferer, and I somehow expected the electric propulsion of the Leaf and its batteries to leave me stranded, underpowered or underwhelmed. Fortunately, none of those happened. Actually, it was quite the opposite.

Instead of reviewing the Leaf as an “electric car” (you know, one of those almost-a-cars that provides diminished range, experience and expectations), I can review it just as a car with an uncommon powertrain. That said, here goes. Continue Reading →

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Porsche Reveals Boxster E Specifications

By on May 26, 2011 in News

By Carl Malek

Following the Boxster E program’s formal debut earlier this year, Porsche has revealed the official specifications of the three Boxster E prototype electric vehicles that are part of this advanced research program. The first two Boxster E prototypes are rear-wheel-drive and are powered by a single electric motor which produces 121 horsepower and 199 lb-ft of torque. As one may expect, the performance of these two prototypes is not exactly what one may call exciting, with a rather leisurely 0 to 60 time of 9.8 seconds, and an equally modest top speed of 124 miles per hour.

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How to Lose Money Without Really Trying

By on April 1, 2011 in News

By Chris Haak

The business case for EVs and hybrids has been on less-than-solid footing for years, both from the consumer’s point of view and the manufacturer’s vantage point.  For instance, the payback period of the price premium that hybrids cost (in terms of savings at the gas pump) often extends beyond the typical ownership duration of a new car.  And we know that it costs GM about $40,000 to build a $41,000 Chevy Volt, and that’s probably excluding considerable promotional and advertising expenses.

Now, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchonne, who has a reptuation for speaking his mind, had this to say about the economics of EVs while on the sidelines of Fiat S.p.A.’s general meeting earlier this week:

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Check Your Mirrors

By on January 9, 2011 in News

Odds and ends about cars and the car business

By Chris Haak

On the eve of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, there are a few news items that may not necessarily warrant a full article.  However, they’re probably still worth mentioning.

FORD’S new Focus Electric, slated to hit the market in late 2011, made its worldwide debut not at the Detroit show, but at Las Vegas’ CES show.  In the keynote address in which he revealed the car, Ford CEO Alan Mulally called his company as much of a technology company as a car company, and he may be right.  Ford has been on the leading edge of infotainment with its SYNC and MyFord Touch system, and has done a great job of pushing high tech features such as self-parking down from luxury cars into more mainstream offerings.

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A Powermat Charger for the Chevy Volt? Sort of.

By on January 6, 2011 in Editorials, News

By Chris Haak

You may have seen Powermat chargers before in your local Best Buy or somewhere online.  They’re kind of a cool concept; you attach them to the back of your smartphone or music player, and they allow you to just set the devices on a charging mat, and they will charge without having to actually plug a power cord into them.  You can imagine the convenience of eliminating the clutter of multiple power wires.  For instance, I have an iPhone as well as a BlackBerry, and some nights, I have to charge both of them, which makes a tangled web of wires on the countertop next to my wallet and keys.

The thing I’m not crazy about with Powermat technology, aside from its fairly high cost for what it’s providing, is that it bulks up the back of your device.  The thin iPhone becomes a thick iPhone thanks to its Powermat “backpack”, which allows for the wireless charging.  For that reason, I just stick with the old fashioned wires to charge my devices.

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First Drive: 2011 Mitsubishi i-MiEV (JDM Spec)

By on January 2, 2011 in Reviews

By Chris Haak

The conventional wisdom is that green cars such as hybrids and EVs have to look like something a little different from the standard three-box sedan if they hope to enjoy sales success. Accordingly, it explains why the Prius outsells the Camry Hybrid.

Well, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV certainly fits the bill of looking different. Technically, I suppose that it’s a one-box car, though in reality, it is far more ovoid and organically shaped to call it a box. It’s smaller than nearly everything on the road today, and will certainly attract attention wherever it goes.  Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to drive an i-MiEV (Japan spec, right hand drive) at a media event, and I found the car to be a curious blend of the normal and abnormal as I tallied a few miles in the little EV.

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First Drive: 2011 Nissan Leaf SL

By on December 21, 2010 in Features

By Roger Boylan

GM’s short-lived electric car of the ‘90s, the EV1, was available in limited quantities as a lease-only proposition, so the 2011 Nissan Leaf is the first all-electric car the general public can buy. Its price is reasonable for such cutting-edge technology: around $25K, once Uncle Sam’s tax credit of $7500 is applied.  Is it worth it? It certainly has great promise, and it’s a well-conceived little car. I spent a short while behind the wheel of Leaf a couple of days ago–a very short while, unfortunately, the actual drive time  having been eaten into by a high-energy sales presentation from Nissan’s own Seinfeld-wannabe; I didn’t catch his name, and I ducked his pitch. I was there merely as an Autosavant, desirous of completing my trifecta of electric-car tests (read about the Toyota PHV Prius here and the Chevrolet Volt here).

The Leaf is powered by a lithium-ion battery pack of the type familiar to me from the Prius Plug-In and Volt. Lithium-ion batteries offer quicker acceleration and a longer range than your common or garden nickel-metal hydride battery, but unfortunately, they’re still at a fairly rudimentary stage of development, with limited range and—in the Leaf—a dead weight of about 500 lbs. We were shown cutouts and diagrams by the comedian. But I was reassured to note that, notwithstanding the futuristic technology, the Leaf is a fairly normal-looking car, a four-door hatchback with that cloyingly cute Pokémon face so typical of small Japanese cars.

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Some Things I Learned About the Nissan LEAF

By on November 2, 2010 in News

By Charles Krome

I had lunch with Nissan vice president Carlos Tavares yesterday—just me, Tavares and about 100 of my new friends from the American Press Association—and it was quite the ol’ learning experience. Tavares, who heads up Nissan’s business in the Americas, was in town to discuss the automaker’s new “Innovation for All” marketing campaign, but he ended up spending much of his time talking about the Nissan LEAF. It was no surprise, of course, as America’s first “real” electric vehicle designed for the modern-day mainstream consumer is nearing its launch, and to say there’s still some skepticism about its viability is a serious understatement.

So, Tavares spent most of his time presenting counter-arguments to the points people usually use to discount the LEAF’s potential. For example, there’s the fact that while the car itself uses no gasoline and produces no tailpipe emissions, there are still plenty of environmental issues around generating the electricity on which it runs. As some on the green side of things like to point out, “clean coal” is an oxymoron.

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Who Killed the Electric Car? Economics.

By on October 27, 2010 in News

Chris Haak

In spite of the relentless hype that the electrification of the automobile has generated over the past few years, culminating in the nearly-simultaneous launches of both the Nissan Leaf EV and the Chevrolet Volt extended-range EV, a new report by J.D. Power and Associates (via CNNMoney) seems to drop a wet blanket on the EV’s prospects for success over the next decade.  In short, the notion that the mix of new-vehicles will be anything other than very heavily weighted toward internal combustion is little more than a pipe dream.

Power projects that hybrids and plug-in vehicles of any kind will make up just 7.3 percent of global automotive passenger-vehicle sales in 2010.  Even more dramatic, though, is the fact that the majority of that number is comprised of hybrids like the Prius, Camry Hybrid, Fusion Hybrid, et al – in other words, cars that aren’t plugged in ever.  If you take those non-plug-in hybrids out of the mix, it drops to between one and two percent of the US market.

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Chevrolet Volt: The Big Lie?

By on October 13, 2010 in News

By Charles Krome

According to my handy-dandy New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary—and by “shorter,” they mean it comes in just two volumes, as opposed to the 20 that make up the full OED—a “coupé” is “an enclosed two-door motor car.” Yet Mercedes insists on marketing the CLS-Class as a “four-door coupe”—does that mean the folks at M-B are lying?

I bring this up because of the recent hubbub over the Chevrolet Volt: It turns out that under certain, relatively uncommon circumstances, the car’s 1.3-liter internal combustion engine will actually contribute some amount of mechanical driving force to its wheels. And if that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, you either haven’t been paying attention to the automotive blogosphere or you need to update your membership in the Official He-Man GM-Haters’ Club.

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