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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.

Next Nissan Rogue flaunts its new look

Remember last April, when Nissan told us it would be launching five new models over the course of 15 months? Well, we've seen the Altima, Pathfinder, Sentra and Versa Note, so that magical fifth model has to be the new Rogue, which our spy photographers recently caught testing. Despite looking like a hodge-podge of black duct tape and garbage bags, we can clearly see that the new Rogue takes a lot of its styling cues from the Hi-Cross concept that Nissan showed at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show. And that's fine - we found that CUV concept to be a decidedly handsome thing, and certainly more attractive than the weird little Rogue that currently roams the streets.
Details surrounding the next Rogue are still very unclear, though our spies suggest that it could be powered by a new 1.2-liter supercharged four-cylinder engine, good for something like 113 horsepower and 140 pound-feet of torque. We'll see about that, since those numbers represent a drastic drop in power versus the current Rogue - to the tune of 57 hp and 35 lb-ft. A diesel engine for other markets is expected to be on offer, and a plug-in hybrid version is also rumored to be in the works, though that won't show up at the vehicle's initial launch.
If Nissan sticks to its plan of showing these five new models in the course of 15 months, that means we should see the Rogue in July. Of course, since things don't always go as planned, it could be many more months before all that camouflage is taken away.

Nissan will build just 45 examples of this 45th Anniversary GT-R

It's been 45 years since the release of the original Nissan Skyline GT-R, so to celebrate, the Japanese automaker has announced this special commemorative edition. Based on the newly updated 2015 Nissan GT-R in Premium trim, the 45th Anniversary edition is done up in a unique shade called Silica Brass – the same color as the legendary R34-gen 2001 Skyline GT-R M-Spec. It also comes with the requisite special badging inside and under the hood, but unfortunately, that's about the extent of the special touches applied to this celebratory model. Nissan will only make 45 highly symbolic examples of this special edition, each to be sold on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. And unfortunately they'll be restricted to the Japanese market, where they'll each command a sticker price of 10,787,040 yen – equivalent to about $91,700 at today's rates, which is already a good ten grand less than what you'd pay for a standard GT-R in the US, anyway. Nissan Releases the Limited-Edition "45th Anniversary" GT-R – Production will be limited to 45 vehicles – YOKOHAMA, Japan (November 25, 2014) - Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today announced that the Limited-Edition "45th Anniversary" Nissan GT-R will go on sale in early February throughout Japan, in conjunction with the release of the 2015 model year GT-R. Since its release in 2007, the Nissan GT-R has been recognized as the world's foremost high performance super sports car, which embodies Nissan's commitment to "innovation that excites" like no other. The GT-R's legacy continues as the ultimate "GT" (Grand Tourer), armed with a comfortable ride, a high level of refinement and benchmark fit and finish; while its world-class high performance embodies the "R" in its name (Racing technology). Thus, its "multi performance" character allows the driver to enjoy the full depths of the GT-R's capabilities, whether navigating corners of a winding mountain road, simply cruising on the open highway or even running errands on neighborhood streets. Based on the 2015 Nissan GT-R, which features ride quality that has been specially tuned to exhibit a more mature, better refined feel than its predecessors, the "45th Anniversary" will come with a special paint color, "Silica Brass" – the same trademark color as the Skyline GT-R M-Spec (R34 Type), which was touted as the "a GT-R that satisfies the mature driver" when it was released in 2001.