Nissan began testing self-driving versions of its popular all-electric LEAF in London recently, as we already reported, but not much further information on the matter was available at the time.
Nissan will be debuting the new LEAF EV in September, with plans to begin sales and deliveries of the model before the end of the year, according to recent reports. Interestingly, the company will be offering lease extensions to current LEAF lessees (along with 3 months of courtesy payments) if they decide to get on the waiting list for the refreshed version of the popular model.
The Japanese electric vehicle market is comprised almost entirely of Japanese auto manufacturers (unsurprisingly), which makes the market an interesting contrast to free-for-all markets like the US.
US electric car sales jumped approximately 68% in February 2017 vs February 2016. Fully electric car sales were up 74%, while plug-in hybrid sales were up 61%. For the first two months of the year, that puts all plug-in car sales up 64%, fully electric car sales up 57%, and plug-in hybrid sales up 72%.
Pope Francis has been very outspoken about the dangers of global warming, the importance of environmental stewardship, and the corruption of greed — with what seemed like a particular focus on Donald Trump and the USA last year.
We reported recently on the news that Nissan would begin testing its self-driving vehicle technologies in London within the near future. Things are apparently going well in that regard, as Nissan has reportedly begun demonstrating its self-driving LEAF EVs to members of the press in “The Big Smoke,” a nickname for London that its leaders would probably like to evolve beyond.
The European EV market had some 19,000 registrations last month, up 31% year over year (YoY), with the Renault Zoe starting the year in the leadership position again.
I believe I’ll take a look at more of actress Margot Robbie’s films after this fresh, nearly 2 minute mini movie from Nissan. I’m impressed. Robbie impresses with her decision to be Nissan’s new electric vehicle (EV) ambassador. She impresses with her faux spontaneous racing of the carmaker’s radical all-electric race car, the Nissan BladeGlider. She impresses with her inviting smile. It’s particularly nice to see this glossy take of her whizzing confidently and comfortably around the world-famous Monaco Grand Prix circuit at midnight.
Detailed statistics on Cruise’s (GM’s) self-driving vehicle testing efforts in California, as provided by the company to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, recently came to my attention (tip of the hat to “Qinsp” on the GM-Volt.com forum). The stats give us a bit more insight into the state of this tech at Cruise/GM.
In Part 2, we talked about heating hot water with electricity with a goal of supplying 100% of that electricity with solar panels.R
emember, we aren’t trying to cover 100% of instantaneous electricity use with solar PV, just 100% of the average electricity use for the entire year in a grid-connected system without batteries. For example, if you use 11,000kWh of electricity during the entire year, your PV system will need to generate at least that much energy for the year (and hopefully some extra to offset grid losses). We’ll talk about that more in Part 5.
