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Posts Tagged ‘electric vehicle’

Nissan will start taking online reservations for the Leaf in April. Better get in line now; some 50,000 people have already signed up!

Nissan LEAF, the world’s first all-electric, zero-emission car designed for the mass market, and leads up to the start of the vehicle-purchase process. The Nissan LEAF will be available to consumers via lease or sale, in a single transaction that includes the battery. Steps to acquiring a Nissan LEAF are:

REGISTER: Interested people can register for more information about the Nissan LEAF on www.NissanUSA.com. To date, close to 50,000 people have registered on the website. Registrants will be given first priority to reserve a Nissan LEAF.

RESERVE: The reservation process will begin in April, shortly after the announcement of the price of the Nissan LEAF. Upon paying a fully refundable $100 reservation fee, registrants will be among the first in line able to order a Nissan LEAF.

ORDER: Nissan will begin taking firm orders in August, for deliveries when sales begin in the driver’s particular market.

EARLY DELIVERIES: Rollout begins in select markets in December 2010, with vehicles available in all major launch markets quickly thereafter.

“The Nissan LEAF purchase process is effortless, transparent and accessible, offering value with a one-stop-shop approach for everything related to the car, including the assessment, permitting and installation of in-home battery charging units,” said Carlos Tavares, Chairman, Nissan Americas. “We want everyone to feel good about having a car that is affordable, fun to drive and good for the environment.”

Coinciding with this next phase of the Nissan LEAF launch is the debut of Nissan’s initial global marketing campaign, which is called “The New Car.” A first look at the campaign – which illustrates Nissan’s passion about the potential for zero-emission mobility and a better, cleaner world – was shown in New York as part of the culmination of the Nissan LEAF Zero-Emission Tour.

The Nissan LEAF Zero-Emission Tour covered 10,000 miles in the United States and Canada, providing the first opportunity for more than 100,000 people to see and learn about the Nissan LEAF first hand.

“There was a groundswell of grassroots support from coast to coast,” said Tavares. “Everywhere we went, people recognized a new form of mobility – a turning point – and they wanted to be a part of it. The response was spontaneous and diverse. We were joined by mayors and government officials, CEOs, utility partners, car enthusiasts, students, dealers, media, environmentalists, Twitter users and lots of families.”

Tour Highlights:
Diverse tour stops, stretching from Stanford University to the Kennedy Space Center. Other stops included: Phoenix on New Year’s Eve, in conjunction with the Fiesta Bowl; Qwest Field in Seattle; the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland; and a charging-station-equipped McDonald’s in Cary, N.C. The tour also stopped at Nissan Americas in Franklin, Tenn; the Smyrna, Tenn., manufacturing facility where the Nissan LEAF will be built starting in 2012; and Nissan Design Americas in San Diego. New York area stops include Madison Square Garden (Feb. 10), and upcoming public displays at the Time Warner Center (Feb. 12) and the Liberty Science Center (Feb. 13).

Due to the high level of interest, Atlanta and Boston were added to the original tour schedule, bringing total cities to 24.

Nissan is planning to roll out thousands of electric vehicles next year and is rushing to establish a network of charging stations where owners can plug in to keep them going.

The Japanese automaker is working with Ecotality to bring 11,210 chargers and 4,700 Nissan Leaf electric cars to five states — Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee. Ecotality is getting a big assist from the Department of Energy, which has granted the Arizona company $99.8 million to underwrite The Electric Vehicle Project. Ecotality calls it “the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in history.”

Creating that infrastructure will be a huge challenge, but Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America, tells the Tennessean the company will be ready when the first Leafs (Leaves?) roll into showrooms in December 2010.

“There is a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time to do it,” he said. No kidding.

Look for the Nissan Leaf EV late next year. Nissan and Ecotality will, according to the Tennessean, install 220-volt chargers in customers’ homes throughout the state and create public charging stations in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville and along the highways connecting those cities. That sounds like a more ambitious version of the charging corridor SolarCity and Rabobank have created between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Why Tennessee, you ask? Because Nissan North America is based in Franklin. Nissan is investing $1 billion in a factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, that will build lithium-ion battery packs for the Leaf and — beginning in 2012 — the car itself. The Department of Energy has loaned the automaker $1.6 billion to help finance that project. The batteries and cars will be built in Japan until the factory comes on line. Nissan plans to build as many as 150,000 Leafs a year once the factory gets rolling. Tennessee is slated to get 2,190 of the 220-volt “Level 2″ chargers that will recharge a dead battery in eight hours.

Ecotality and Nissan also will install 50 “Level 3″ quick-chargers that reportedly can do the job in as little as 20 minutes, according to the Tennessean. All told, Ecotality says it will deploy 10,950 Level 2 chargers and 260 Level 3 chargers in the five states. When those come on line remains to be seen, and the project could be slowed by building regulations and other bureaucratic hurdles, warned Colin Read, the company’s VP of corporate development. “We could get permission to install a charger in a home in Phoenix in three weeks, for example, but it took six weeks in Scottsdale (Arizona),” Read told the paper. “Our biggest issue is trying to get the red tape out of the way.”

Nissan believes cities might opt to install charging stations in public parking garages and other locations, and it also is talking to WalMart about the possibility of having chargers in the retailer’s parking lots. CostCo also has expressed interest, according to the Tennessean.

 Ecotality and Nisssan have launched a website to provide information about the Leaf, with real-time maps showing where charging stations are located. The site also allows you to suggest locations for charging stations in your community. When we drove a Leaf prototype last spring, Perry told us the cost per mile is 4 cents if you figure gas is 4 bucks a gallon, electricity is 14 cents a kilowatt hour, and you drive 15,000 miles a year. Compare that to the 13 cents a mile you’ll pay in a car that gets 30 mpg. Perry said the car will cost about 90 cents to charge if you plug it in off-peak.

The Tesla Model S EV will start at $49,900 after a $7500 tax credit and 440-volt charging will be available. That base price is for the 160-mile range pack; there will also be a 230-mile range pack and a 300-mile range pack. It goes to 60 in 5.6 seconds and can fit 5 adults and 2 children. The Model S powertrain includes a liquid-cooled 9-inch motor, floor-mounted battery pack and a single-speed gearbox, delivering effortless acceleration, responsive handling and quiet simplicity — no fancy clutchwork or gear-shifting required. Model S costs as little as $4 to fully charge. Will start production mid 2011!