Just in time for these tough times...
Nissan finally unveiled its plan to release an electric car in both Japan and the United States by 2010, according to a recent article in the New York Times. Carlos Ghosn, the company's chief executive, made the announcement Tuesday at a news conference in Tokyo and revealed his decision, which contradicted opinions he expressed about hybrid vehicles just a few years ago.
In 2005, Ghosn stated that the cars were simply "niche products" that were valuable only in states like California, where strict fuel-economy standards exist. He now insists that the situation for pursuing the hybrids is a no-brainer: more people are purchasing cars and it's becoming more critical to reduce emissions.
Can Nissan really step up as the innovator of a "zero-emissions" vehicle (that term, by the way, refers to the emissions from the tailpipe and not the overall electricity used to run the car), when many believe they have lagged behind this trend for a while now? Time will tell if Nissan will indeed have them mass-produced by 2012. While I can't proclaim to fully understand (or predict) the impact that lithium ion battery use will have on our fuel consumption, I have to say that the idea is an intriguing one.

Let's get right to this: no funny lead-ins, no witty sayings.
On Tuesday, the Senate delivered an overwhelming 97 -1 vote in favor of halting deliveries to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an action intended to lower the nation's ever-rising gas prices. Although this is a Democratic amendment, many Republicans are standing in open opposition to the President, who does not support the bill because of consequences that could arise in the case of a national crisis.
I was passing a local
This weekend, I got a further personal look at the
Has it occurred to anybody why you never see any large SUV's or over-sized vehicles on European streets whenever there's a story from abroad on the 6 o'clock news? It's because Europeans have been dealing with $8, $9 and $10-a-gallon gasoline prices for years.
According to auto executives, more cylinders and horsepower are not as alluring as they were last year. And as buyers turn away from SUVs and trucks, they are turning the smaller car market on its head.
Did you hear the one about the big city mayor who's urging town residents to drink tap water instead of the bottled kind because the
I was looking over a list of the Top 10 most fuel efficient vehicles not long ago. And while I wasn't surprised that the top four were all hybrids-including the
Its official: car buyer's habits have drastically changed in this country for the first time ever. According to data compiled by industry analysts reported on the website
There is no mistake that the
There is a popular TV commercial running now where a prospective buyer has to walk outside the showroom and double-check to see if he's actually in a Saturn dealership. The premise being that the vehicles he sees don't look like Saturns of old, but are the types of stylish designs he'd expect to find somewhere else.

