2014 Nissan Murano Le on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Tesla, BMW and Nissan meeting in secret to discuss charging tech

It's interesting what's happening in the electric vehicle field. It used to be that BMW and Tesla were competitors. Then – and of course they're still competing, especially in the public mind – they were working together on ... something. Maybe. And now, the Financial Times reports that the two luxury automakers are meeting with Nissan. Again, maybe. The scuttlebutt is that the three companies are interested in working together on something to do with charging electric vehicles, potentially a global recharging standard. Currently, when it comes to fast charging, BMW uses the SAE Combo standard, Nissan uses CHAdeMO and Tesla uses its own Superchargers. The meeting was prompted by Tesla opening of all of its patents the other day, FT says. Speaking during the recent annual shareholder meeting, Musk said he was "more than happy to have other manufacturers" use Tesla's Superchargers but that, "there is no other electric car that can accept anything close to 135 kilowatts." Let's assume the technical hurdle can be overcome. With any potential patent/licensing problems out of the way, these discussions with BMW and Nissan might be revolving around this other angle that Musk mentioned: "They (other automakers) just have to contribute to the capital cost, so figure out what percentage of the time are their cars using the Supercharger network and then they can make a contribution proportionate to their customer usage of the Supercharger network." That certainly sounds like something that could take some time to figure out. News Source: Financial TimesImage Credit: Elbilforeningen / Flickr Green BMW Nissan Tesla Electric supercharger chademo sae combo

Nissan GT-R drag races Swiss fighter jet

Proving that speed is fun in any language, Nissan's German arm recently pitted a GT-R up against an ex-Swiss Air Force fighter jet, called the Hawker Hunter. Now the idea of a car-versus-plane drag race is nothing new, but this is the first time we can recall a GT-R being involved.
While this Nissan video is almost a month old, we're pretty sure you won't be disappointed by the action, which shows the two high-speed machines racing along the two-kilometer runway. We don't want to ruin the suspense, so scroll down for the latest matchup of sports car versus fighter jet.

Nissan gives us the business on the art of clay modeling

The team from The Dashboard recently stopped by the Nissan Technical Center in Japan for a look at what exactly goes into creating a full-scale clay model. While automakers have been using clay bucks for decades, designers and engineers are now combining computer renderings and hand-sculpted clay models to determine how a new vehicle will look in our world. Engineers use specially formulated clay kept warm in an oven to bring the body panels to life. They then coat the clay in a thin plastic film to add body color for the final look.
By the time everything is said and done, workers may have hundreds of hours in the model's creation. So, what happens when the company no longer needs the buck? They get scrapped. Someone comes in and dismantles the whole creation. We presume that action is set to the wailing tears of everyone who had a hand in building the model. Check out the video below for a closer look.