nissan leaf
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The first page of a new chapter in green-car history was written yesterday, as Nissan formally handed over a 2011 Leaf electric car to Olivier Chalouhi of Redwood City, California. He was the very first person in the U.S. to order the all-electric vehicle, and the first to take delivery. Leaf convoy Chalouhi accepted the keys to his black 2011 Nissan Leaf SL at a dealership in Petaluma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco. Accompanied by four other Leafs, he then drove his new car to a press event at San Francisco's City Hall. The scheduled 1:30 pm event kickoff was delayed about 15 minutes...
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Naming Electric Cars And Companies: Is Anything Good Left?
Naming new car models is always tough. The latest head-scratcher is GM's decision to rebrand the replacement for its Aveo subcompact as the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic, a name better associated in the U.S. with hedgehogs or hamburgers. But that's nothing compared to the challenge of naming electric-car...
John Voelcker -
Hertz To Launch Electric-Car Rentals in NYC, Add Smart To Fleet
As it gears up to offer electric cars in selected rental fleets across the country, Hertz has dribbled out details of how its Global EV program will actually work. Today we learn that New York City will be the first region to receive the electric and plug-in hybrid rental cars, with rentals to...
John Voelcker -
2011 Nissan Leaf Electric Car Named Car of the Year in Europe
The 2011 Nissan Leaf all-electric car has been designated as Europe's 2011 Car of the Year, according to reports in Autocar and other media outlets. While the Leaf won our GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award, the bulk of similar U.S. awards went instead to the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...
John Voelcker -
Did We Err On The Leaf, Or Is GM Volt Boosterism Bashing It?
Last week at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, we announced that the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car was the winner of the GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award. That same week, a flurry of other media outlets almost uniformly gave their "car of year" awards to the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...
John Voelcker -
Making Silent Electric Cars Noisier: 3 Carmakers, 3 Sounds
It looks like carmakers are going to make their quiet, electrically powered cars a lot noisier. And that's going to happen regardless of whether there's any actual data to support the notion that electric cars are so silent they pose a hazard to blind pedestrians. As of now, three different...
John Voelcker -
So it's come down to this, has it? The U.S. car-buying public is apparently so stupid that the Environmental Protection Agency has to rate the efficiency of an all-electric car that burns no gasoline in ... miles per gallon. [facepalm] That's the only possible reaction to the news this afternoon that the EPA has approved a "fuel-economy" label for the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car showing a rating of 99 "miles per gallon equivalent." The ratings for the gasoline the Leaf doesn't burn in the city is 106 "MPGe" and the rating for the fuel it can't use in highway travel is 92 MPGe. There is...
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Cheap Insurance For EVs? LEAF May Benefit, Will Others?
With all the talk of purchase price, charging costs, tax incentives, congestion charging exemptions and maintenance costs for EVs, there's one financial area which often gets overlooked - insuring them. With so few EVs on the road it's been difficult to gauge whether they'll cost more or less than...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Nissan Leaf: GreenCarReports Best Car To Buy 2011
It’s been a long time coming. More than 80 years, in fact, since viable electric cars were offered to U.S. car buyers. Now, finally, at long last, it’s happened. The 2011 Nissan Leaf is the first practical, five-seat electric car—a full plug-in, running solely off grid...
John Voelcker -
Nissan To Deliver Only 5 Leafs In 2010, More Delays Imminent?
Uh-oh, Nissan. There’s been word a-brewing on car forums for that the carmaker is experiencing delays in delivering the much-anticipated all-electric Leaf, which is slated to start arriving next month. But only five Leafs will arrive in the U.S. next month — one for each of the five...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
GreenCarReports Best Car To Buy 2011 Nominee: Nissan Leaf
The 2011 Nissan Leaf looks like a conventional compact hatchback with unconventionally sinuous styling. It seats five, has all the usual safety features, and we particularly like the way the navigation system is integrated into the rest of the car’s information systems. But the significance...
John Voelcker -
How Does Nissan Recharge Some Leafs? With A Diesel Generator
We love it when people send us photos. Especially photos of things that manufacturers aren't necessarily keeping front and center for the cameras. The photo here is a "range extender" that Nissan uses to keep its 2011 Leaf electric cars fully charged for media events. The picture was taken (by a...
John Voelcker -
Both Nissan and Chevrolet have a lot riding on delivering their first electric cars before the end of December, meaning during calendar 2011. Now it looks like Nissan may squeak by with just a few early production cars delivered to a handful of dealerships, because the company has significantly delayed the dates for deliveries of 2011 Leaf electric cars to both dealers and buyers. As reported on Nissan-Leaf.net, dealers have been informed by Nissan that Leaf deliveries previously scheduled for December are now slated for January. Nissan North America's director for product planning and...
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2011 Nissan Leaf Roundtable: High Gear Media Editors Weigh In
The 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car is clearly one of the most revolutionary vehicles to be sold in the U.S. in many years. It's a first battery electric car that relies solely on plugging into grid electricity for its the energy that powers it. Unlike the 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric...
John Voelcker -
Chevrolet Volt To Cut Down On Oil Changes
Change is definitely eminent in the automotive industry; in fact, some would tell you that the industry is changing fast now than it has in the last couple of decades. It isn’t just the powertrains or the safety equipment—it is everything down to how often you might have to do an oil...
Jonathan McGrew -
Nissan Will Build Leaf Electrics Among Altima, Maxima Gas Cars
It's one of the most radical cars ever to be built in this country, the first all-electric vehicle to go on sale in many decades. So you'd expect that when the Nissan Leaf enters production in Smyrna, Tennessee, late in 2012, it would have its very own production line, right? Nope. Not at all. Far...
John Voelcker -
NY Marathon: 2011 Nissan Leaf Acts As Zero-Emission Pace Car
A single zero-emissions 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car served as pace car for the world renowned New York City Marathon, held this morning in crisp, sunny autumn weather. Its presence slightly reduced the exhaust that surrounded the lead racers as they covered the 26.2-mile, five-borough course amid...
John Voelcker -
What Happens When the 2011 Nissan Leaf Battery Pack Runs Low?
The PR guy got us lost. Twice. But David Reuter, Nissan’s chief communications director, didn’t break a sweat even when the Remaining Range indicator fell below 5 miles and started flashing. Which leads us to think that even after the 2011 Nissan Leaf battery pack hits...
John Voelcker -
All the different incentives to purchase electric cars can be confusing. But if all the stars align and you're the lucky person who can take advantage of multiple incentives, there’s a slim chance that you could buy a brand-new 2011 Nissan Leaf for a mere $12,300. Here’s how it works: Start with the $32,780 list price of a Leaf base model. You’ll have to wait until next year, when you file your taxes, to cash in, but the Leaf qualifies for the highest $7,500 Federal tax credit for the purchase of a plug-in vehicle. (The Leaf should appear in the list of eligible vehicles on...
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2011 Nissan Leaf Electric Car: First Drive Review
October has been quite a month. This week we drove a pre-production version of the 2011 Nissan Leaf, the first production electric car to be sold by a major automaker in more than 80 years. Unlike the range-extended electric 2011 Chevrolet Volt, which we drove last week, the 2011 Leaf is a pure...
John Voelcker -
Live: First 2011 Nissan Leaf Electric Car Rolls Off Production Line
After years of anticipation and multiple media events, the day is here: The first production 2011 Nissan Leaf will roll off the production lines this Friday at 11:30 am Japanese time. The embedded video below shows the live event, and we hope that it remains archived after the fact. We'll shortly...
John Voelcker -
Two Things About Electric Cars The Wall Street Journal Missed
We read a lot of stuff about green cars and, lately, most of it's about electric cars. Sometimes the coverage is unquestioning and adulatory. More often it's cranky and dismissive. But major media outlets are working hard to understand the complexities of what is a huge, slow, expensive, and very...
John Voelcker -
2011 Nissan Leaf: Free Rental To Allay Range Anxiety?
Electric cars are becoming more commonplace on motorways around the world, especially in Europe where there are many urban cities that don’t require people to drive long distances. However, Nissan is starting to understand that the consumers may have “range-anxiety” do to the...
Jonathan McGrew -
How the 2011 Coda Sedan Hopes To Compete With the Nissan Leaf
Coda Automotive, the California startup that will begin delivering its 2011 Coda Sedan electric car at the end of the year, has ambitious plans. CEO Kevin Czinger expects to sell up to 14,000 all-electric compact sedans in the company's first full year of operations. The car is assembled in the...
John Voelcker