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Auto industry insider previews tell-all book, What Did Jesus Drive?

"It's about some of the biggest crises in history. It's about who did it right and who did it wrong." - Jason Vines
Jason Vines, the former head of public relations at Chrysler, Ford and Nissan, has seen a lot during his more than 30-year career, and now he's offering a behind-the-scenes look at the auto industry in his tell-all book What Did Jesus Drive? that went on sale this month.

Nissan applies for 'R-Hybrid' trademark, but what is it for?

Patent and trademark filings are sort of like tasseography for those of us in the auto industry. If you know where and how to look at something, there's a lot to be figured out. Take this trademark filing from Nissan - it's similar to the Pure Drive badge found on a Versa or Sentra, but the bottom half sports the phrase "R-Hybrid." This wouldn't be remarkable if the "R" in R-Hybrid weren't the same style as the "R" in the Nissan GT-R's badge, right down to the serifs.
While it's easy to see this as grasping at straws, it makes a fair degree of sense. The R35 GT-R may be a dominant performance machine, but it's been around since 2008, which is donkey years in the automotive industry. And based on the recent crop of hybridized hypercars and racecars, a hybrid GT-R doesn't seem like such a stretch.
As Car And Driver points out, figuring out that the GT-R will go hybrid isn't hard - figuring out when it will arrive, is. The buff book rightly points out that a new GT-R isn't expected until 2017, but that designing and trademarking a badge four years ahead of time is a bit odd. Car and Driver speculates that we could see a mildly hybridized R35, although the chances do seem remarkably low. Head over to C/D for a more thorough rundown on why this just might be a GT-R badge, including comparisons with other R-badged Nissans.

Before next-gen arrives, Nissan Leaf may get 120-mile battery

As Nissan prepares to unveil its next-generation Leaf electric vehicle, the Japanese automaker may come out with an "interim" version of sorts that could spur lagging sales of the model in the US. So says Automotive News, which reports from a person familiar with the process who wasn't identified that Nissan soon may start selling a Leaf with a 30-kilowatt-hour battery, up from the current 24 kWh version. It could arrive as soon as next month. Indeed, Nissan's temporary solution may be to provide range-hungry drivers with a single-charge range of 100 to 120 miles. Sure, that doesn't quite match up with the distance a gas-powered vehicle can go on a full tank, but it would be an notable upgrade from the current single-charge range of 84 miles for the Leaf. Word first got out about the Leaf possibly adding a 30-kWh battery in late May. Nissan's contending with falling Leaf sales in the US that may be caused by both the expiration of some plug-in vehicle credits as well as the prospect of a glut of used Leafs back on the market as three-year leases run out. Through the first half of the year, Nissan sold 9,816 Leaf vehicles in the US, a 23-percent drop from a year ago. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said in a June 23 shareholders meeting that the company can improve battery technology enough to put an electric vehicle's single-charge range on par with the distance a conventional car can go on a full tank of gas. Related Videos: