July 2011

54.5 Miles Per Gallon – 2025 fuel efficiency standard

July 31, 2011

Really? Ain’t gonna happen. And you might as well grab some coffee – this is going to take awhile. On July 29, 2011, President Obama announced an agreement with 13 automakers to achieve a corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) of 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025. All of the automotive corporate executives stood around President […]

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Forget oil – what about lithium?

July 29, 2011

Are we just moving from one dependency to another? In conversations that we have had with a variety of individuals, this topic has come up. We have looked at the vast lithium deposits in South America and thought that they seemed to be relatively large, but it likely seemed that way when people thought about […]

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LEAF quarter mile times

July 29, 2011

Living Life 1/4 mile at a time We just read that a major automobile magazine had run a LEAF down a dragstrip for fun. So we thought that we would check out some LEAF performance data. We went to Edmunds.com for our source material and found an interesting bit of information in their test standards. […]

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LEAF earns 5 star overall safety rating

July 26, 2011

Nissan LEAF gets highest safety rating from NHTSA This is undoubtedly one of the questions that we get asked most often, and now we have an answer – 5 Stars. The question is obviously, what is the government’s safety rating of the LEAF. Since the government had not released results before now, there was no […]

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2011 Nissan LEAF availability

July 25, 2011
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What is the current status of LEAF distribution? 2011 Nissan LEAF production has ramped up to near its capacity levels. Full Oppama, Japan capacity is still only around 4,100 units per month for global distribution. And remember that all Japanese industrial and manufacturing companies have had their electric supply reduced by 15%. So max production […]

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EV Battery Re-use

July 23, 2011

GM announces a secondary use electric vehicle battery plan It’s not like we’re picking on GM or anything, but seriously… This communication, only one of many, creates an awareness of the difference in the approach that these two manufacturers bring to the sustainability movement. Many in the industry (and many observers from both the business/industrial […]

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What Living LEAF Is

July 21, 2011

And (perhaps more importantly), what Living LEAF is not Living LEAF is a source of information about the Nissan LEAF. Living LEAF is not a news organization. The online electric vehicle (EV) media world (and beyond) has been turned upside down over the past couple of days due to a massive mis-communication blitz. A blogger […]

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Nissan LEAF availability improved for 2012 – at a price

July 20, 2011
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Improved features bring higher cost for model year 2012 As Nissan makes the LEAF available in more markets for model year 2012, more features will be standard (depending on trim level) accompanied by a higher manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). Nissan announced that the ordering process will open July 25 to consumers with existing reservations […]

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Nissan’s CARWINGS

July 19, 2011

So… What is CARWINGS? What CARWINGS is not, is OnStar. While in Japan operators are available to provide routing assistance to provide for traffic avoidance, no such service is available in the United States; at least not at this time. Based on the information that we could find (which, it seems, is somewhat scarce to […]

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The grand-daddy of Telematics Systems

July 16, 2011

OnStar Let’s start our review of telematics systems with the one that really got everything going – General Motor’s OnStar system. First, OnStar isn’t just a system. It is a subsidiary corporation of GM founded in 1995. This should give you a clue about GM’s commitment to this system. Services offered by OnStar include hands free […]

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