Nissan and Renault may be joined at the hip (well, at the CEO anyway), but they’re not going easy on each other as both charge ahead to bring down EV costs. Nissan’s Leaf is currently the cheapest major OEM-produced EV, but at around €30k, it’s still not all that cheap. Now, Renault is saying that its forthcoming Zoe EV will put the hurt on its cousin, the Leaf, with a starting price of “around” €21k. It’s not that much smaller than the Leaf and it’s got the same 100 mile projected range… so what’s Renault’s secret? Does it have some special pricing formula? The answer is yes… but it’s not so secret. You see, when you buy the Zoe (sometime in 2012), you won’t be buying a battery. Instead, you will lease the battery for around €70 per month. You see, unlike Nissan’s Leaf, the Renault Zoe will be able to use Project Better Place’s battery switch-station to swap batteries in just minutes. So, if you charge from home, the Zoe and the Leaf will be largely the same… but if you live near a PBP swap station, the Zoe’s range can be doubled in minutes. Plus, you don’t own the battery, so killer EV depreciation isn’t a worry. It’s like we’ve said: it’s not the cars that will break EVs into the mainstream, it’s the business model.

“Kyo no asa nikkei wo yomimashitaka?” – did you read this morning’s Nikkei?

Today, this is the most uttered sentence in the Japanese auto industry. Under the headline “fast action needed to revamp carmakers”, Japan’s leading business daily rips its own carmakers several new orifices. The editorial doesn’t mince words:

“Japanese automakers lack the momentum of their South Korean and German rivals and may find themselves losing out big on the global stage unless they rethink their strategies.”

As far as the Nikkei is concerned, Japanese carmakers messed up big-time. Let’s start where it counts, at the bottom line: Read More >

The Index of Effluency trophy goes to the 24 Hours of LeMons team that accomplishes the greatest feats with the most improbable car; if your team’s car is a horrifyingly rusty heap that sat in a field for decades prior to being resurrected for racing, is a type of vehicle that never belonged on a road course in the first place, and manages to clank through more than 200 tough laps on a car-killing track, you have an excellent shot at taking home the coveted IOE. The NSF Racing 1962 Plymouth Fury accomplished this feat at this weekend’s Southern Discomfort race. Read More >

Here I am, back in Carolina Motorsports Park in South Carolina for the second annual Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons, and the seventh LeMons event to take place at CMP. The ’10 Southern Discomfort really was uncomfortable, with freezing-ass temperatures and plenty of frigid mud all around, and that scared off many of the usual Southern LeMons teams this time… but the joke was on them; the 50 or so teams that had the guts to show up will enjoy beautiful 70-degree weather all weekend. Read More >

The Barcelona Reporter, er, reports that a new law passed by Spain’s parliament

allows dealerships a full refund from manufacturers for unsold cars and, in some cases, to charge carmakers for sales teams’ labour and other related expenses… Car manufacturers will have to repay dealerships for any cars they fail to sell after three months, under the new law.

In the event carmakers’ contracts with distributors expire or are cancelled, they must also pay for layoffs at salesrooms and compensate them for lost custom.

Proponents argue that the law, which was bundled with a number of economic measures, would protect Spain’s 150k dealer jobs which, they argue, exist “at the whim” of manufacturers. Needless to say, the OEMs are not amused, and the association of foreign automakers who build cars in Spain (ANFAC) hints that investments by members like Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen will have to be reconsidered in light of these new rules. And even within Spain, the measure is drawing controversy. Industry minister Miguel Sebastian complains

How will a German, Japonese or French (car manufacturer) understand this law if I do not even understand it myself?

In other “Spain hates cars” news, Auto Motor und Sport reports that the country has also approved a new urban speed limit of 30 km/hour (about 18.6 MPH) in order to reduce pedestrian deaths.

Chrysler got so much buzz out of its “Imported From Detroit” Super Bowl ad that it sold out of apparel bearing the tagline “within hours” and even had GM Marketing boss Joel Ewanick admitting

Yeah, we’re getting our butts kicked.

Now Chrysler is literally wrapping itself in the tagline, covering its Auburn Hills headquarters with the semi-ironic (what with ChryCo headquarters being located in Auburn Hills and all) phrase. And Chrysler’s ad agency is even exploring ways to remake Chrysler’s dealerships into “Detroit Embassies.” AdAge quotes the Creative Director for Chrysler’s ad agency Wieden + Kennedy as saying

One of things we’ve been working on for last couple of days is a dealer kit. How can we make dealers around America feel like Detroit embassies? How can we put this feeling about Detroit and its optimistic resurgence in dealerships? We’ll help them keep that stuff rolling.

But will it make a difference?

Read More >

Winter testing continues for the platform underlying Mercedes’ four compacts of the apocalypse, and Auto Motor und Sport’s cameraman have caught copious footage of the fun. But remember, the traditional B-Class hatchback won’t be headed stateside, having been nixed by MB’s US dealer net. Instead, we’ll get

a crossover, a sporty coupe and a sedan

based on the same front-drive platform. Heck, the platform may even spawn a baby Infiniti CUV, positioned under the EX, as part of Daimler and Nissan’s hookup. Given that this test mule is validating the internals of a new direction for the Mercedes brand in the US, do we like what we’re seeing?

Here at TTAC we often find ourselves bemoaning the lack of compact pickups on the US market, and trying to determine if that fact is due to weak demand or a lack of OEM investment into the segment. But now Chrysler has announced a new entry-level Ram 1500, codenamed “Adventurer,” which proves that full-sizers are the reason  compact pickups are doomed in the US. According to ChryCo’s release, the “Adventurer” is

a value-priced, HEMI®-powered Ram 1500 regular cab truck that appeals to a cost-conscious, new-vehicle buyer who doesn’t want to give up performance and capability. The unnamed new Ram 1500, like the Ram Tradesman, offers buyers a standard HEMI V8 engine with its 20 mpg rating for the same price competitors are charging for their V6 engines.

The price? $23,830, including destination charge. That’s less than a V6, automatic 2WD Toyota Tacoma and nearly identical to a V6, automatic, 2WD Nissan Frontier. And at 20 MPG hwy, the Adventurer’s efficiency tradeoff is relatively small considering the performance advantages of its 390 HP HEMI V8. Though we applaud Ram’s decision to bring an entry-level, utilitarian pickup to the table, we bemoan the fact that this makes selling a compact pickup that much harder.

More Chinese sales numbers for January are coming in as China slowly begins to return from the Chinese New Year holidays. We are keeping a wary eye on the January numbers. They are seen as an indicator for the whole year. Most of the world’s auto industry relies on China for growth and volume. A marked slowdown could have serious consequences. Read More >

The Center for Automotive Research claims that its latest study [full document in PDF here] is not a forecast of EV sales, but rather “focuses on the expected deployment by states.” Still, by using hybrid vehicle sales to determine deployment patterns, and using a national estimate of electric vehicle market share annually (note: “the national estimates used in this paper do not constitute a CAR forecast and only reflect projections that were available at the time of this study”), the study finds that only 496,000 plug-in vehicles will be on the road by 2015, by which time the Obama Administration hopes to have a million EVs on the road. Still, the report envisions annual sales of plug-in vehicles as growing rapidly, from 77k units in 2012 to 140k annual units by 2015… a number that casts some serious doubt on the Administration’s recent (dubious) estimate that 1.2m vehicles will have been produced for the US market by 2015 (and not for the first time).

Read More >

Automotive News [sub] reports that Mercedes-Benz has agreed to take over Smart car distribution in the United States from Penske Automotive Group after about three years of operating as a Penske-run distribution channel. Beginning in July, Mercedes will take over all of Smart’s US-based operations because

1. It needs the small-car volume to meet new corporate average fuel economy standards that take effect in the United States in the 2016 model year.

2. Daimler AG integrated Smart into the Mercedes-Benz car unit September. The United States is the only market where Smart and Mercedes operate separately.

But the impact of this deal isn’t limited to ownership and operations, as AN [sub] reports that the four-door car being developed by Nissan for Smart USA has been canceled.

Read More >

Felix Kramer, an entrepreneur and plug-in car activist, is almost certainly the first person in the world to own both a Nissan Leaf and a Chevrolet Volt… which, at least in theory, makes him the perfect person to compare the real-world ownership experiences of these two highly-hyped vehicles (and once again prove the uselessness of “automotive journalism”). Though he demurs that he “hasn’t had much chance to really compare them,” he tells The Solar Home and Business Journal that

It’s quite obvious to me that for two-car families, it’s no problem in any way for the second vehicle to be an all-electric because that’s the car used for local driving. There’s an enormous market of tens of millions for all-electric vehicles despite Americans’ so-called range anxiety.

Cars are sold as giving you freedom. People go into a dealer and say about an all-electric car, “Oh, I have to plug it in. What if I want to drive it across the country someday? I won’t buy this car.” That mentality is very deeply seated, and that’s part of the reason that the plug-in hybrids could be the primary platform for plug-in vehicles for the next decade or two.

In the meantime, people who get a plug-in hybrid as their second vehicle may find themselves asking, “Why did I pay for this engine, I’m just driving it electrically.” In our family, the Leaf will be the car my wife and I will pick first every day when we’re in the Bay Area. When we’re both driving or we want to travel beyond the range of the Leaf, we’ll take the Volt.

Read More >

The EPA’s National Clean Diesel Campaign and the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Energy Program have both been defunded in President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, as the White House focuses on the much–debated goal of putting one million electric cars on the road by 2015. Bloomberg reports The NCDC budget was cut from $80m in 2010 to zero, even though Obama only just reauthorized $100m per year of grants through the program ten days ago. According to Senator Tom Carper, one of the  sponsors of that re-authorization, the program

leverages federal dollars so efficiently that for every $1 invested, we get over $13 in health and economic benefits in return

Oh well. Meanwhile, fans of the oil-burners imported by the German brands can relax: the NCDC focused on improving diesel emissions from freight, ports and fleets rather than subsidizing Euro-phile sports sedans. Besides, diesel isn’t the only loser in the rush to push plug-in cars to market: hydrogen is also losing out.

Read More >

One of the recent advertising trends we’ve seen is the comparison of a new car with something ridiculous… like an armored car or a sofa. Now, Nissan is inverting the “shooting sofas in a barrel” approach by taking on one of the toughest comparisons imaginable: making readers decide between a Juke and a swimsuit model. Here, the Juke and a model from Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition go head-to-head in a “curb appeal” competition… up next, “headlights,” “airbags” and “ride quality.” Then, testers will strap on their crash helmets and try to determine which model “slides its rear end out” in the most satisfying manner… plus whatever other dirty double-entendres you can come up with. Just the thing to get you into that romantic Valentine’s Day mood…

For quite some time, we have been tracking a growing trend in China: Chinese cars. Well, Chinese cars, made by joint ventures with foreign carmakers. Here could be a new one, with a twist: Toyota so far has been hesitant following Nissan and others on the plugin bandwagon. Its Chinese joint venture, FAW-Toyota, will change that. They will come out with a Chinese-branded car that is a Toyota on the outside, and a Chinese-developed EV on the inside. If the information of BJNews (via Gasgoo) is correct, that is. Read More >