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Nissan's Ghosn called out by Deltawing's Panoz in print ad

When the Nissan ZEOD RC limped to the side of the Circuit de la Sarthe a mere five laps into this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, we imagine that a certain American motorsports figure at least smirked a little. Don Panoz's ongoing feud with Nissan probably means he wasn't sorry to see the arrow-shaped racecar's poor showing, and now he's stepping up his campaign against his former racing partner.
For those who need a refresher, back in 2012, Panoz and Nissan teamed up to field the DeltaWing, an innovative, wedge-shaped racer, as the first entry in the 24 Hours of Le Mans' experimental Garage 56 concept. The car rapidly became a fan favorite. The Panoz/Nissan alliance didn't last, though, and before long, the DeltaWing's designer was getting a paycheck from Nissan and the ZEOD RC racer arrived. Shortly after that, Panoz began mulling over a lawsuit alleging intellectual property infringement. The American motorsports icon would eventually pull the trigger on a suit back in December of 2013.
Panoz's latest move in the ongoing feud involves an open letter in both The Nashville Tennessean, the paper that serves Nissan's US headquarters, and trade paper Automotive News. The letter calls out Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn directly, and points out some of the similarities between the DeltaWing and the ZEOD RC, going so far as to quote the original car's designer, Ben Bowlby.

Chevy Bolt meets 2016 Nissan Leaf at LA NEDW event [UPDATE]

The 2015 National Drive Electric Week kicked off this past weekend with events happening all around the world. Our friends from Plug In America (PIA) send us some notes and pictures from one of the larger events in Los Angeles, CA. This event was special because it saw the debut of the 2016 Nissan Leaf and the west coast debut of the Chevy Bolt concept. The two electric vehicles were in the same place at the same time for the first time ever. Besides that little bit of electric vehicle history, the organizers helped facilitate 800 test drives, PIA co-founder Zan Dubin Scott told AutoblogGreen. The city of Los Angeles also gave proclamations to movie director Chris Paine (Who Killed The Electric Car? and Revenge Of The Electric Car) and the three national organizers of Drive Electric Week: PIA, the Sierra Club and the Electric Auto Association. Speakers at the event included names that should be familiar to AutoblogGreen readers: California state senator Kevin de Leon, race car driver Leilani Munter, and Dave Barthmuss of General Motors, among others. Joel Levin, the executive director of Plug In America, said during his speech that, "Electric cars are changing the world. Every time one of these vehicles gets sold, our air gets a little cleaner. We will take a big bite out of climate change. Our economy will not be subject to wild swings in gas prices. And we will not be involved in foreign wars over oil." Tell us about your own NEDW events (that happened already or are about to happen) in the Comments below. UPDATE: We received the text of Andrew Speaker's comments at the event. Speaker is Nissan's director of Electric Vehicle (EV) Sales & Marketing. We've included them below. Thank you, and good afternoon! On behalf of Nissan, we are proud to sponsor National Drive Electric Week, and we're excited to be able to celebrate it here in Los Angeles with all of you. This is actually my first National Drive Electric Week event, and I am inspired by the level of enthusiasm here today, and seeing everyone's passion for electric vehicles first hand. Nissan has had some big news in the last few days with the introduction of the 2016 Nissan LEAF, which is the world's first affordable electric car to get more than 100 miles of range on a single charge. The 2016 LEAF offers a new 30 kWh battery with an EPA-rated 107 miles of range... and its making its global debut here in Los Angeles.

Panoz and DeltaWing suing Nissan over BladeGlider concept

Similarity is bound to occur in an industry where most of the products follow the same basic formula. But once in a while a new design comes along that doesn't quite reinvent the wheel, but comes pretty damn close. The DeltaWing project was one such design - and Nissan, the car's designers allege, stole that design.
After the DeltaWing proposal was rejected by the IndyCar series, its creators took it to Le Mans and brought Nissan on board to supply the power. Nissan subsequently pulled out of the program and came out with the ZEOD RC hybrid racer (right), bearing a suspiciously similar design with an unusually narrow front track at the end of a long nose cone, and a wider track at the back. The Japanese automaker then displayed the BladeGlider concept (below, right) at the Tokyo Motor Show, envisioning a translation of the same formula into road-going form.
The similarity did not escape Don Panoz, who - after making sports and racing cars under his own name and founding the now-defunct American Le Mans Series - was a central figure in bringing the original DeltaWing to life. Now Panoz has filed a lawsuit against Nissan, soliciting the courts to issue a cease-and-desist order on both the ZEOD RC and BladeGlider projects, naming Nissan motorsport chief Darren Cox and Ben Bowlby (who defected to Nissan from the DeltaWing program) as part of the suit.