Tag Archives | Leaf

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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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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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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Volt Rated at 93 MPGe, Leaf at 99 MPGe

By on November 25, 2010 in News

By Chris Haak

This past week, the EPA released the long-awaited official mileage estimates for the two newest kids on the block, the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt.  Because both cars are capable of running without burning gasoline (in fact, the Leaf cannot use gasoline at all), many were curious as to how the Monroney stickers would turn out for these two trendsetting automobiles.  So now we have the answers, and they are probably more realistic and more relevant when comparing against other cars than some of the initial claims that had been thrown out by both GM and Nissan.

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Review: 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid

By on November 24, 2010 in Reviews

By Roger Boylan

When a representative from Toyota asked me if I’d be interested in having the plug-in version of the Toyota Prius hybrid to myself for a couple of days, I of course said yes, knowing that relatively few drivers have had that privilege. And a privilege it has been. Rarely do I consider myself a trendsetter, a go-getter, or on the cutting edge of anything, but I felt like all three at the wheel of this Jetsonmobile.

The name “Prius,” of course, is as synonymous with “hybrid” as the name “Bill Clinton” is with “ego,” and Toyota has sold well over two million copies since its worldwide introduction in 2001, so Priuses tend to be among the more ubiquitous vehicles on the road. Not the Plug-In, though, which Toyota calls the PHV, for “Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle.” This variant first appeared at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show, and only about 150 are currently being test-driven in the U.S.  These cars are not “mules” or prototypes, but fully finished cars that look and perform pretty much like regular Priuses, the main difference being that the PHV boasts a larger-capacity battery pack consisting of 3.6-volt lithium-ion cells rather than the nickel-metal hydride cells in the standard Prius. This allows for rapid charging via household current and a short electric-only driving range at speeds up to 62 m.p.h.

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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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Deconstruction Zone: Nissan Leaf Polar Bear Commercial

By on September 14, 2010 in Editorials

By Charles Krome

It’s obvious you’re in for a maudlin minute or so as soon as you hear the tinkling piano and see the melting ice drip-dropping on your screen—you know, sort of like tears. Then, after a quick shot of dirty ice falling from a calving glacier, you finally get to see the star of the show: A sad-looking polar bear alone on a shrinking ice floe, paws crossed beneath his chin like a six-year-old who’s been sent for a “timeout” for reasons he doesn’t understand.

I really feel kind of sorry for the bear, too: Not only does he have to deal with a shrinking habitat, but he’s also been stuck into one of the cheesiest commercials currently on the air today, the new spot for the Nissan Leaf.

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Chevy Volt Price Confirmed at $41,000

By on July 27, 2010 in Editorials

By Chris Haak

We’re not quite sure why this is even news today, since former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz told reporters two years ago, in 2008, that the Chevy Volt would sell for about $40,000 before the $7,500 federal tax credit.  But as the Volt’s fall 2010 launch date approaches, the company has confirmed that Lutz’s prediction proved true.  At that time, Lutz also noted that the Volt in its first generation would blow past its cost target by some $10,000, or 33 percent over the $30,000 bogey at the time the program’s development began.

Why is the Volt so expensive, when a new Prius goes for about half the price with similar interior space (actually, the Prius seats five, and the Volt seats only four) and an all-electric Nissan Leaf goes for $32,780?  And why should you consider a Volt over a Prius or Leaf?

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