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Prince Charles tours Nissan Leaf plant in Sunderland, UK

Environmental sustainability and job training. Those are two of the issues the UK's Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, has long supported. And that's why the king-to-be paid a visit to Nissan's Sunderland plant earlier this week. As shows in a two-minute video from Broadcast Exchange, Prince Charles took a tour of the plant, checking out the production line while conferring with the young (and slightly star-struck) students there who were learning a thing or two about building a car, electric Nissan style. The Sunderland plant is located about 285 miles north of London. The factory runs an apprenticeship program for budding car-builders and employs about 6,700 people. The Nissan Leaf electric vehicles built there are sold in Europe, where Leaf sales jumped 33 percent last year. Opened in 1986, the Sunderland factory broke ground on its battery-production facilities in 2010 and began producing the Leaf in the spring of 2013 after Nissan invested about $635 million upgrading the plant to handle electric-vehicle and lithium-ion battery production. Even before the EV battery production activity the Sunderland plant burnished its green credentials by installing wind turbines to help with the power supply. Prince Charles already has his credentials (sort of), thanks to a biofuel Jaguar and a wine-powered Aston Martin. Check out the video with Prince Charles below. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

YouTuber TJ Smith is your singing Lyft driver in Nissan Sentra ad

Perhaps you've seen Nissan's latest commercial, promoting the Sentra. It's a fairly simple little spot, showing the compact's driver blaring Billy Idol's Mony Mony, singing along and encouraging other motorists to join in.
We'd have been fine had it been left at that. It's a simple commercial that shows the car with a catchy tune and smiling people. Nissan couldn't leave well enough alone, though, and has come back with this. Starring TJ Smith - the driver from the original ad and an apparent YouTube celebrity famous for the kind of thing shown in the original commercial - the new ad expands on the old, with more people, and more Mony Mony. This time round, Smith is serving as a driver for the Lyft service, who just happens to break into song with his fares in the car.
Scroll down for the full video. If you've no idea what we're talking about, we've also included the original commercial.

Nissan will run pilot car-sharing program with two-seat concept EVs

Nissan is using a little car to test out possible solutions to a rather big problem. The Japanese automaker will start a car-sharing program this month using its New Mobility Concept two-seat electric vehicles, which is based on the Renault Twizy platform. The cars will be the foundation of a car-sharing network called the Ultra-Compact Mobility Certification System that will take place in Yokohama's Sakonyama Danchi District. Working with housing agency Urban Renaissance, Nissan says the New Mobility Concept vehicles are part of a "method for revitalizing urban and suburban areas." Indeed, instead of the cars being used for government agencies and utility programs, they'll be used by the general public to get around. The program kicks off this month and will run for one year. Other Nissan NMC vehicles were recently put into rental service in the town of Shikano, in the east of Tottori Prefecture, for tourism purposes, at a cost of about $10 an hour plus $12 for a training license. Nissan has been running various mobility programs using the car for the better part of two years. To get an idea how small the vehicles are, their length is about a foot shorter than a Smart ForTwo. We've got Nissan's press release below. Related Video: Nissan to Test Ultra-Compact EV in Yokohama Car Sharing Project - Yokohama's Sakonyama District will start a car-sharing trial run of the Ultra Compact Mobility Certification System using the Nissan New Mobility Concept two-passenger electric vehicle (EV) - YOKOHAMA, Japan (March 23, 2015)-Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. will conduct a local trial run of the Ultra-Compact Mobility Certification System, a car-sharing network for residents of the Sakonyama Danchi District in Yokohama City's Asahi Ward. Nissan will be collaborating with Urban Renaissance (UR), a semipublic housing agency associated with Kanagawa Prefecture's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's (MLIT) Kanto District Transport Bureau, to study the possibilities of using ultra-compact EVs as a method for revitalizing urban and suburban areas. This local test of the car-sharing network will be implemented from late March 2015 until the end of March 2016. The trial will assess the potential of ultra-compact electric vehicles as a catalyst in revitalizing large-scale, urban and suburban commuting methods, and will gauge the value of ultra-compact EVs as short-range modes of transport that can complement public transportation.