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For those of us in the thick of the next generation transportation movement, the Nissan LEAF is one hell of an important vehicle.

Along with the Chevy Volt, and, to a lesser extent, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, it is one of the very few cars that can lay claim to being the first mass market EV for the globe. On top of that — with a price after federal tax credits of about $25,000 — the LEAF has the distinction of being the first affordable EV in that category as well.

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Ahh Taxis. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they provide a much-needed service to millions of Americans and travelers on an annual basis. While mostly relegated to cities, taxis can be found just about anywhere. But with stop-and-go driving the most popular taxis based on heavy, obsolete sedans, these vehicles consume far more than their fair share of fuel.

California Yellow Cab, in a bid to curb its oil consumption, has purchased 25 Ford Transit Connect vans for taxi use. While frugal with fuel already, Yellow Cab is going one step further by converting them to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).

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Automakers and environmentalists alike have pinned a lot of hope on the electric car. It is the wave of the future, they tell us, and it is the only way we will ever been weened off of oil. But when can we the average Americans, expect to get behind the wheel of one of these silent, emissions-free vehicles?

According to Ford’s CEO Alan Mullaly in an exchange with Mahalo’s CEO Jason Calacanis at the All Things Digital conference, not anytime soon.

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The road to a national unified program to regulate fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions for light duty automobiles in the U.S. was a long one. It started years ago, with automakers pitted against the U.S. government, California and a dozen or so other states in a battle to avoid having to deal with the fractious and discordant set of emissions and fuel economy regulations that were beginning to spring up all over the U.S.

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We all know Tesla Motors has grand plans to eventually be the next great U.S. automaker and sell EVs made for all walks of life, but right now it is stuck building a $100,000 plug-in toy for the rich — the Roadster.

Don’t get me wrong, Tesla deserves beau coup credit for making a business case that there is demand for EVs. In fact, at last year’s LA Auto Show, GM’s Bob Lutz came right out and said that Tesla gave GM “major impetus” and went on to say that he is “thankful to Tesla for furnishing the proof that was needed for those of us who championed the Volt within GM that other people believed in lithium-ion technology as well.”

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The German equivalent of AAA — Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club, or ADAC — just finished an exhaustive test of almost all cars available for sale in Europe (241 to be exact) in real-world conditions to answer one question: which car can travel the farthest on €30 (~$36 US) worth of cash?

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In a new article, an Oxford researcher has examined what will happen when peak oil hits. According to Jörg Friedrichs, the outlook is not good. In his article Friedrichs doesn’t attempt to answer the question when peak oil will happen (or if it already has). Instead he imagines that it has happened and the world has to deal with it.

His conclusions: the world will have a “slow and painful” adjustment to peak oil lasting a century or more with the inevitable collapse of industrial society and the disintegration of free trade. How cheerful.

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When they unveiled their plans to build a 40 mpg “Eco” version of their upcoming Chevy Cruze at the New York Auto Show last April, GM claimed that the Cruze Eco would have the fuel economy of a hybrid at a much lower price. Today GM put an actual number on what a much lower price means: a starting price of $18,995 for the base Cruze Eco when it goes on sale later this year.

Whether that is really a much lower price than the hybrid competition is a whole ‘nother thing entirely.

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A few weeks ago, Daimler announced it would be making a strategic alliance with Renault-Nissan to share engines and car platforms. It seems like a pretty good match; Mercedes is well known for its reliable and fuel efficient diesel engines, and Renault-Nissan is making a big push into the electric car department.

So just what kind of crazy cars might we see out of this alliance? If AutoCar is right, the next Nissan performance Z-car could be powered by a Mercedes diesel engine. Say what?

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I have heard that “art” is only art when it exists for no other purpose than itself. Whatever that means. Similarly, there are cars, like the Bugatti Veyron, that exist for no other reason than they can exist. I mean really, who needs to spend $1.6 million on a 1,000 horsepower car? You could easily build a 1,000 horsepower car for under $100,000 these days!

Forget the Veyron though. Bugatti is apparently developing an all-electric luxury car, based on the Bentley Continental GT, that would rival the Veyron in horsepower and excess.

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America, lets be honest with ourselves for a moment. When it comes to our material possessions, we tend to be a picky bunch. How else can you explain the variety of choices we have when we buy just about, well, anything. This is especially true about cars.

And oh how our tastes do change. Just a few years ago, people were buying big gaudy SUV’s and were more concerned with cup holders than fuel economy. But once again, our priorities have changed, and a new study suggests quality and fuel economy are now top concerns among new car buyers.

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Some people aren’t as concerned with saving the environment as they are with saving money. Indeed, money is much of the reason why we still don’t have electric cars. In many people’s minds they cost too much for too little range or power. And while we now have cars that can get upwards of 500-600 miles on a tank of gas… electric cars have their work cut out for them.

The big factor holding back electric cars are batteries. The government knows this, and currently there is a bill sitting in Congress called the Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010. Among other provisions, it offers a $10 million award to the first developer to come up with a battery pack that can get 500 miles on a charge.

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Although little more than an idea on paper right now, Sauter Carbon Offset Design has set its sights on being the first company in the world to cater to the as-yet-non-existent ultra-rich luxury green yacht crowd.

The first vessel they hope to sell will be the Transcendence, a 49 meter superyacht with a Mercedes Benz diesel powerplant hooked to a generator to provide the electricity to run the props, a lithium-ion battery system to store power from the grid when plugged in at dock, a bunch of solar cells to help provide a bit of power when out at sea, and a top speed of 25 knots. The company says the boat will have a “50 to 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” when compared to its counterparts.

Does this herald in a new generation of luxury yachts, or is it simply the wish list of a company that has no chance in hell of succeeding?

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After last week’s announcement that Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra had bought Indian EV maker REVA to form the bigger, badder Mahindra REVA, GM has now decided it’s in their best interest to pull out of a partnership with REVA that had aimed at developing low-cost electric vehicles for emerging markets.

It seems GM didn’t feel that sharing EV tech with a company that will likely be a major competitor in the years to come was a wise move.

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TTXGP 2nd place winner Michael Barnes with the Lightning EV1-powered bike.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the season opener of the TTXGP, the first electric motorcycle racing series. In that article I mentioned one of the things that makes this series so special — the unique ownership structure, Trust.eGrandPrix.org. The TEO enables teams to own a piece of the TTXGP series. Nobody can buy into the TEO, it’s only open to competitors. Normally, teams spend a lot of money to compete, much of which is paid by sponsors, while the organizing body pays to hold & market the events, then collects all of the income from TV rights, ticket sales, and event sponsorship. If TTXGP grows as popular as MotoGP, or even a national series like the AMA, this has enormous potential.

For example, Dorna, the company which manages MotoGP, showed operating profits reported at €51.1m for 2008. For an established series like MotoGP with sizeable purses for winners, it might not make sense to share ownership amongst the competitors. But for a new series in the startup phase, it’s a great way to reward racers for their loyalty to the cutting edge. This new ownership structure rewards loyalty in a number of ways.

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In a classic case of sustainability layering that borders on downright slathering, the City of Tsukuba in Japan is set to test-host a new car sharing system using electric vehicles that are powered almost exclusively by solar energy. According to a recent report on the solar electric car sharing plan, the partnership involves the Mazda2 (aka the Demio in Japan) with electric vehicle drive trains from Think, using lithium ion batteries developed by the U.S. company EnerDel, and all based on the ZipCar car sharing model.

The choice of Tsukuba as a test community is no accident, considering its moniker “Science City.” By design and population, the city is an ideal laboratory for giving sustainability concepts a real-world workout.

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Earlier this month Navistar announced it had begun production of the first Class 2c-3, 2-ton, medium-duty commercial electric truck in the U.S. — the eStar. It’s also the same vehicle that FedEx has announced it will be testing for fleet use in LA this year.

Now Navistar says that the first market the eStar will be commercially available is in “one of the nation’s most environmentally sustainable cities and a leading advocate for energy-efficient transportation,” Portland, Oregon.

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Mark Perry (left) next to the Nissan LEAF battery mock up

Nissan shocked everybody a bit earlier this week when they announced they had developed a DC fast charging station that had the capability of getting a Nissan LEAF’s 24 kWh battery pack from zero to 80% full in under a half hour. It wasn’t so much the fast charging capability — also known as Level 3 charging — that shocked. We’ve all known Level 3 charging was coming. No, it was the price of their charging station.

At about $17,000, it represented an astounding departure from the $60,000 to $150,000 prices that have been quoted for the better part of a year and a half for a fast charging station. I had a chance to ask Mark Perry, Nissan’s director of product planning and strategy for North America, about just how Nissan had pulled it off and what kinds of plans Nissan has for bringing their Level 3 charging station to the U.S. (more…)

At the Nissan LEAF battery plant groundbreaking yesterday in Smyrna, Tennessee, I made it a goal to squeeze as much detailed information as I could out of Nissan regarding the LEAF and what kinds of equipment it will ship with.

To this point — as is usually the case in the echo chamber that is the internet these days — nobody (including myself… mea culpa) seems to have been able to get it right about two things: whether or not the LEAF will have a Level 3 fast charge receptacle when it ships and if it will be able to use a Level 1 standard 3-prong outlet.

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Driving in a Daihatsu Mira equipped with a huge 74 kWh lithium-ion battery and a brushless DC motor, the Japan EV Club has achieved a new world record for an electric car: 1003.184 kilometers (623 miles) without recharging.

Although the team didn’t exceed 25 mph and was on a racing oval at a constant speed, the 8.4 miles traveled per kWh (mpkWh) statistic is an amazing achievement in-and-of-itself.

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