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2013 Nissan Pathfinder: May 2013

Despite the snow-capped photos you see here, our long-term Pathfinder has been the subject of some proper pre-summer lovin' here in metro Detroit (we're working on a new gallery). Now that the warm weather has hit Michigan, many of our staffers have eagerly grabbed the keys to our big, brown Nissan for road trips all over the place. And the Pathfinder has indeed proven itself to be quite the worthy long-distance hauler, as editors John Neff and Seyth Miersma have already experienced.
This time around, a couple of our colleagues from AOL Autos put hundreds of miles on our trusty Nissan. And while everyone agrees that the Pathfinder is a solid vehicle for the task of road tripping, there are a couple of specific pros and cons that have been mentioned on several occasions.

Nissan e-NV200 electric van will start FedEx testing in DC

The electric van test program that Nissan and FedEx announced today at the Washington Auto Show isn't really all that new. After all, FedEx is already testing the all-electric e-NV200 in Singapore, Japan and Germany. The news today is that FedEx will be one of the first companies to test the EV in the US, and Nissan brought a prototype to the show to gin up interest. 200 CHAdeMO stations were added in December, a monthly record. The e-NV200 uses a powertrain similar to what's in the Nissan Leaf and weighs about the same as that passenger car, but Nissan isn't talking about US performance figures quite yet. Nissan isn't even saying if the vehicle will even come to the US, but this test program sure hints that something like that is in the works. For now, all that's official is that Nissan will bring two - yes, just two - e-NV200 units to the US, letting FedEx test one in the Washington, DC area for between six to eight weeks before cycling the EVs to other companies in the US over the next year. The idea, as you may have guessed, it to gather data on how companies might use this van and let Nissan figure out if it wants to sell the e-NE200 here. The van will start being built in Barcelona, Spain this spring and is currently intended for Europe and Japan. FedEx is no stranger to greener vehicles, and has 167 EVs in its US fleet right now. Read more in the press release below. The e-NV200 can use CHAdeMO fast charging, and Nissan said today that it has helped install 570 of those DC fast chargers in the US since announcing expansion plans last year. At the time, the target was 500 chargers in 18 months, so things are progressing faster than publicly anticipated. In fact, 200 CHAdeMO stations were added in December, a monthly record. Jan. 22, 2014 Nissan and FedEx Express Put All-Electric e-NV200 to Work in Collaborative U.S. Test WASHINGTON, D.C. - FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp., and Nissan announced today at the Washington Auto Show that the two companies will begin testing the Nissan e-NV200, a 100 percent electric compact cargo vehicle, under real world conditions in Washington, D.C. This test marks the first time the vehicle will be running in North America. FedEx Express and Nissan have conducted similar e-NV200 tests with fleets in Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Brazil. FedEx and Nissan are both committed to reducing the environmental impact of their operations worldwide.

Watch a Nissan GT-R make up 17 spots on the first lap

By now, enthusiasts should be plenty used to seeing the Nissan GT-R passing "lesser" vehicles on the road - and let's face it, that accounts for a good 99-percent of other cars out there. But what about on the racetrack, where GT racers are all homologated to the same general specifications and tuned with an eye toward fairer competition?
Turns out Godzilla is just as formidable an adversary on the track, as demonstrated by this latest video. Shot from inside the cabin of British driver Alex Buncombe's GT3 racer during the Blancpain Endurance Series race at Monza, the video shows what happens (or at least happened this time) when a well-driven GT-R is relegated to the back of the grid - even when that grid is populated by the likes of Porsche, Aston Martin, Lamborghini and McLaren.
Buncombe and his teammates in the Nissan GT Academy Team RJN ultimately finished the race in 13th place, but what's remarkable is that they started way back in 32nd, making up 17 places on the first lap alone. Scope out the frenetic action in the video below.