Earthquake
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The devastating earthquakes that hit Japan earlier this year may have severely affected the production of cars worldwide, but according to Nissan Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, his primary concern was to get production of the Nissan Leaf back on track. According to an article published in The New York Times on Friday, Ghosn told the assembled guests at a Japan Society event in Manhattan that the all-electric car was top of his post-tsunami to-do list. Calling it Nissan’s “anti-crisis weapon”, Ghosn said the Nissan Leaf had the potential to help combat the company’s exposure...
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Never Fear, More Priuses Will Be Here! Or Not. It DependsIf you want to buy a new 2011 Toyota Prius hybrid these days, you may have to scramble. Supplies are down to 3,000 units, which is less than 10 days' worth of sales. In auto industry terms, that means "sold out," and dealers are charging higher markups on the few precious Priuses they still have...
John Voelcker -
Earthquake To Delay U.S. Assembly of Nissan Leaf Electric Cars?
By far the most ambitious plan to build and assemble electric cars in the U.S. comes not from General Motors or Ford, but from Nissan. Now, it may happen a little later than expected, due to the March 11 earthquake and resulting tsunami that severely damaged large portions of Japan's industrial...
John Voelcker -
Mitsubishi Turns 2012 ‘i’ into Portable Emergency Power Station
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) isn’t a new concept, and is the name given to technology which gives plug-in vehicles the ability to feed power stored in their battery packs back to the utility company at points of peak electrical demand. But we’ve yet to see the technology being implemented in...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Will Japanese Power Problems Mean Fewer 2011 Toyota Prius Cars?
World supplies of the highly popular Toyota Prius hybrid could be further threatened by new electric power problems in Japan. The Japanese government requested on Friday, May 6, that the Hamaoka nuclear power plant system shut down all of its reactors, which supply to the central Japanese power...
George Parrott -
Will Surging Gas Prices Save The Honda Insight?
The Toyota Prius is the best-selling hybrid vehicle of all time and recently passed three million sales globally and a million in the U.S., over more than a decade. And when fuel prices rise, so has demand for the Prius and other high-mileage vehicles. So then, why hasn't it for the Honda Insight?...
Bengt Halvorson -
Nissan has announced that as a consequence of Friday's devastating 9.0 earthquake and Tsunami in Japan production at all of its factories will remain halted until it has fully assessed the damage sustained to its factories, equipment and parts suppliers. Although Nissan's factories have been spared the brunt of the damage which Japanese Prime minister Naoto Kan called the biggest crisis since World War II, Nissan has said six of its plants suffered some damage to buildings and equipment and is currently assessing if its own supply chains are intact. Without a working parts supply chain...
