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Nissan drives glowing Leaf on Holland's glowing highway

If you thought that applying phosphorescent paint to the Nissan Leaf made it look like something out of Tron already, brother... you don't know the half of it. Or at least you won't have until you see what the car looks like on a glow-in-the-dark highway. A glow-in-the-what-now, you ask? That's right: for about a third of a mile on the N329 in the Netherlands, running through the city of Oss, the highway glows in the dark. Not the whole roadway, of course. That'd be weird. Even for the Dutch. No, the so-called Smart Highway designed by Daan Roosegaarde (whose Dutch heritage is evident by the number of vowels in his name) uses phosphorescent stripes to obviate the need for lighting. They work just like the paint on the Leaf (or for that matter any number of toys we had as kids), absorbing sunlight during the day and emitting it at night... in this case for up to eight hours. The resulting footage and photography, though surely heavily edited, needs to be seen to be believed. That is, assuming you don't already live in a computer where users force you to play in games for their own amusement and Jeff Bridges runs amok. Related Video: BRIGHT FUTURE: NISSAN LEAF IS FIRST GLOW-IN-THE-DARK CAR TO DRIVE GLOWING HIGHWAY · All-electric Nissan LEAF is the first glow-in-the-dark car to drive on the luminous Smart Highway in Oss, Netherlands · Unique highway design saves energy by removing need for street lights · Nissan EV sales increase by 313% across the Netherlands · Watch the film at: https://youtu.be/8Dv3PxDj2ks Nissan has blazed a trail by driving its unique glow-in-the-dark zero-emission LEAF along the world's first glow-in-the-dark motorway in Oss, Netherlands. Nissan recently became the first modern passenger car manufacturer to apply glow-in-the-dark car paint to a car, to showcase how many customers of the world's best-selling electric vehicle are powering their car from solar energy generated at home. Now it has gone one step further, by driving the all-electric Nissan LEAF on the Smart Highway – the first time a phosphorescent car has been driven on the famous stretch of road. And the location of the world's only luminescent highway was fitting, as Nissan has announced an uplift in electric vehicle sales of 313 percent in the Netherlands last year. The innovative Smart Highway project was conceived by designer Daan Roosegaarde to help guide drivers in the dark, while saving energy that might otherwise be used in street lighting.

Nissan Maxima was almost axed

The redesigned 2016 Nissan Maxima goes on sale in early June, but according to Automotive News, this eighth-generation model almost didn't see the light of day. That's the word from Pierre Loing, vice president of North American product planning. "A lot of people assume it was a forgone conclusion that, of course we will continue with another Maxima," Loing told Automotive News. "But frankly, the forgone conclusion at that moment was that there would not be another Maxima." When Loing joined Nissan in 2012, he was tasked with building a case for a new Maxima. The Japanese automaker was focused on making cost-efficient, global platforms, but the Maxima sold almost exclusively in North America. And not in high numbers, either. But Loing says Maxima is an important part of Nissan's history in the United States. The car was introduced in 1981, and Loing says Maxima perhaps has better name recognition than Nissan itself. The company is pleased with its 2016 Maxima. "When I look at this car, I'm proudest of the fact that it's here at all," Takeshi Yamaguchi, former Nissan North America VP of vehicle engineering, told Automotive News. "And on top of that, I'm proud of that fact that we took the Maxima beyond where it was, instead of taking it backward." Related Video:

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.