The GE Wattstation killed my Leaf! That’s the story being reported by the New York Times as well as PlugInCars.com. As the tale goes, 11 Leaf owners have had their chargers “damaged” while charging with GE’s Wattstation home charging station. The relative significance of only 11 failures aside, the Nissan Dealer in San Pablo, CA confirmed to PlugInCars.com that Nissan North America has notified dealers of a potential problem with the Leaf and the GE home charging station. TTAC contacted Hilltop Nissan and they have yet to return our calls. Rather than just parroting back the usual news reports we dug deep. We contacted GE and Nissan, consulted some professional electrical engineers and read though hundred of pages of boring SAE documents. Click past the jump to learn more about EV charging than you ever wanted to know. (Read More…)

When the question of whether a Death Watch should be started for Suzuki was first posed here at TTAC in April, there was a lot going on behind the scenes at the stylized “S” brand but not many facts filtering out to the public.

As of today, TTAC’s Death Watch starts for Suzuki’s North American operations. And if you haven’t been following the drama, here’s some background for you…

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Brazilians are unhappy with GM. GM is cutting capacity and jobs at a Brazilian plant. This made the Brazilian government unhappy, because it had cut taxes on domestically made cars, in exchange for manufacturers maintaining the size of their workforce. It also made unions unhappy. They voiced their displeasure on Monday by going on strike, Reuters says. (Read More…)

Sajeev,

Great analysis of the GT-R.  Slow day at work, so I decided to cut a few inches out of the middle as you suggested (maybe more than just 2″…).  Please excuse the crappy “MS Paint” editing and my poor editing skills… but I still think the profile looks so much better.  Like a real super car.  And it eliminates the fake fender vent! (Read More…)

Australians are unhappy with Ford. In January, Ford received more than A$34 million ($35 million) from Australian state and federal governments to guarantee local production until 2016. Today, Reuters reports that Ford will cut 440 jobs, or about 15 percent of its Australian workforce. (Read More…)

Europe’s new car market continues on its downward spiral with sales down 2.8 percent in June. Half year sales are down 6.8 percent across the EU, data released today by the European Automobiles Manufacturers’ Association ACEA show today. Some countries and automakers do much better, some much worse. (Read More…)

From the Only In China blotter: A customer who did not receive the service he expected for his Cayenne used sex to drive home his point in a photogenic way. A Chinese man threw body-painted girls into the battle with his Porsche dealership. Do not click if arty camel toes offend you. (Read More…)

Cars are like fruits and vegetables: They sell better fresh. Of course, even the freshest dud remains a dud. But all else being equal, those with a fresher line-up outsell those with aged product. TrueCar has put together an interesting table: What are the proportions of model year 2011 (yes, they are still on the lots), 2012, and 2013 in a brand’s sales? (Read More…)

Back in 1992 Toyota was at the forefront of quality engineering.

The Lexus nameplate had become the best selling import luxury brand in North America thanks to ES, LS and SC models that were easily among the most over-engineered vehicles of the time. 200k became not only an achievement for most Toyotas, but an expectation as well, and the models of that time were rolling testaments to a culture that prioritized the principles of Kaizen (continuous improvement) and Muda (the minimzation of waste) above all else.

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Some mornings are surreal.

You wake up and all of a sudden, there is some theme music to your life.

Every step seems to be moving to a strange beat. The beginning credits begin rolling in. Walk out of the house and into your 11 year old Honda Insight with 190k. Turn on the key. 10 mile commute, and…

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Owning a Volkswagen occasionally requires a Vanagon’s worth of patience, but there are compensations. The newest one: a high-speed trackday at one of the country’s more interesting racetracks, complete with instruction, for fifty bucks.

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What ever happened to the TTAC project car? Here is some inspiration of what to do to the poor Sierra. Joel Olsen from Norway converted a 1982 Ford Granada, the European epitome of blah, into a 1,700 horsepower monster. (Read More…)

While sitting through the new Pitbull-scored Fiat 500 ad, a model at :49 seconds in caught my eye – it looks a lot like the leaked photos of the 500T, which supposedly carries a version of the Abarth’s 1.4L turbo engine.

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Michigan utility Consumers Energy wants to have its share of the reluctant auto boom. For that, you need to buy an electric vehicle.  What did you say? Range?  Consumers Energy has an answer: An app for your iPhone. (Read More…)

The era of V8 hegemony is over at Jaguar; the current lineup, which offers no alternatives with fewer than 8 cylinders or 5.0L of displacement, will be getting two new engine offerings – including a 4-cylinder option.

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