1998 Nissan Quest Gxe Mini Passenger Van 3-door 3.0l on 2040-cars

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When public charging fails you and your EV

Think that owning and driving a plug-in vehicle in green-centric San Francisco is easy? You should probably think again. That's because a lot of other residents already have the same idea, and there aren't enough charging stations to keep up. A classic First World problem, for sure, but a problem nevertheless for at least one EV driver. A Wired reporter shares the experience test-driving a Nissan Leaf for a couple of days. The catch is that, like many of the city's residents, he's an apartment-dweller without a dedicated parking spot, meaning that he's at the mercy of publicly-accessible station availability. And that infrastructure, he writes, is "woefully inadequate" to handle the current crop of plug-in vehicle drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area The crux is that, while Nissan Leaf's navigation systems can direct a driver to the nearest stations, they neither say if the stations are occupied or if they're open to the public. The former issue is a major one because, unlike gas stations, a plug-in vehicle charging station can be occupied for hours instead of minutes. That means plug-in vehicle drivers without overnight charging access will likely constantly be on the hunt for unoccupied charging stations in the area until more stations are deployed. Read the details of Alex Davies' trying times here. Featured Gallery 2013 Nissan Leaf View 55 Photos News Source: WiredImage Credit: mayorgavinnewsom/Flickr Green Nissan Electric San Francisco

Nissan not shuttering Leaf EV battery plants, at least not yet

The big news on the electric vehicle front today is that Nissan is considering slowing down EV battery production in the US and UK and source all of Nissan's big packs come from Japan. Nissan may also buy some batteries from the Korean company LG Chem. This is apparently causing dissent within Nissan, but it follows what Alliance partner Renault is doing in the hunt for 180-mile EVs. This change – officially denied by Nissan – raises a lot of questions here, since Nissan made a huge deal about building the Leaf pack in Tennessee a few years ago. In fact, the car's big price drop was due, in part, to localizing battery production. If the company is really going to give up on building the packs where it makes the cars, then does Nissan not see itself as being capable of producing an energy-dense battery cheap enough to compete with Tesla and its Gigafactory and GM (which, of course, has long worked with LG Chem on batteries)? Whatever Nissan decides, it needs to be ready to compete in a market that offers a $35,000, 200-mile car by 2017. "We have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation." – Renault-Nissan's Rachel Konrad Nissan would not comment directly on the reported change, but Rachel Konrad, the Alliance's global director of communications and marketing told AutoblogGreen, "The Renault-Nissan Alliance remains 100 percent committed to its industry-leading EV program. This global commitment continues for the foreseeable future, and we have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation. Nissan has no plans to impair its battery investments. Beyond that,we will not comment on speculation or anonymous sources, and as a matter of policy the Alliance does not confirm or deny procurement reviews." There's a point-of-view where it doesn't matter where the batteries come from if the resulting EV is competitive, price-wise. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, after all, said during a recent Twizy test drive that the battery is a means, and the objective is the car. In the end, Nissan is saying it has no near-term or medium-term plan to shutter plants in US or UK and CEO Carlos Ghosn says, "What's important to us is that electric car performance fully meets customer expectations." Whatever's going on, Ghosn has seen three top executives leave the Renault-Nissan family recently.

Skyline-powered Nissan Patrol shows Juke-R how it's done

If you had told us a few years ago that people would be shoehorning GT-R engines into Nissan SUVs, we'd have told you you were nuts. But that was before the Juke-R came along. And before the Qashqai-R project followed a similar formula. Well, now there's a third example.
We don't know who made it or who it belongs to, but some our-kind-of-nuts character has shoehorned the 2.5-liter turbocharged inline-six from a Skyline GT-R into a fourth-gen Nissan Patrol sport-ute. And from the sound of it, we gather the engine has also been heavily tuned beyond its 215-horsepower stock specification.
What's even better is that this Patrol-R isn't alone. Check out the second video below and you'll see a whole club of Patrol owners who've shoehorned in Nissan RB engines like the ones that powered generations of Skyline GT-Rs.