Hasta La Gadget!

A driver is San Francisco is now the world’s first owner of Nissan’s new electric car, the Leaf. The U.S. delivery came days before the car’s Japanese launch. Nissan last night called it “the first delivery of an affordable, mass-market, all-electric car since the first days of the automotive era.”

The lucky owner is one Olivier Chalouhi, a Bay Area-based technology entrepreneur. Chalouhi seems pretty satisfied with his purchase thus far, telling the press, “It’s great on the highway. When you accelerate, it sounds like you have a jet engine or a turbine under the hood… You have to hear it–it’s very futuristic.”

The five-seater goes on sale in Japan on December 20th. Here in the U.S., pre-orders have already old out. More of those vehicles will be delivered this week in California, Arizon, Oregon, and Washington state.

Hertz is getting serious about its about-to-launch, by-the-hour plug in car rental service Connect by Hertz. Set to launch on December 15th in New York City, the company has plans to extend the service into San Francisco, Washington D.C, Texas and London by the end of 2011. The list of cars in the fleet which will be available to rent now includes the previously announced Nissan Leaf, the Volt, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, the Tesla Roadster, the Smart ED, and the Coda Sedan. The program will start extremely small, with only 20 total vehicles available to rent to begin with, but with a plan for between 500 and 1,000 by the end of 2011. The Hertz EV rental program has a fee to join up, and the cars will be rented on a first come, first served basis, but you can sign up now if you’re ready to get behind the wheel of one of the aforementioned silent bad boys.

Hertz plug-in rental program to boast 1,000 vehicles, including the Tesla Roadster originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so there’s no actual way to phone up Sad Keanu Reeves and confirm that the Mercedes-Benz BIOME is indeed on sale in the “real world,” but it should be. Revealed in The Matrix’s own LA Auto Show, this here vehicle has a theoretical weight of just 875.5 pounds, but it’s likely far too wide to cruise on this planet’s existing roadway system. The vehicle was imagined by designers from the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design Studios in Carlsbad, California, and it’s said to be “fully integrated into the ecosystem, from the moment of its creation right through to the end of its service life.” How so? It’s grown “in a completely organic environment from seeds sown in a nursery,” and just being totally frank here, we’ve no idea what that means. But hey, if M-B can figure out how to grow cars in Morpheus’ backyard, who are we to question the reality of it?

Continue reading Mercedes-Benz BIOME concept car grows in a nursery, on sale now in Zion

Mercedes-Benz BIOME concept car grows in a nursery, on sale now in Zion originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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3.5mm auxiliary inputs and stereo Bluetooth used to be good enough — but that was before Apple announced AirPlay a few months ago. Now, everything else sounds like someone is stabbing you in the ears; the world looks black and white, and food no longer has any taste. AirPlay, save us! Taiwanese firm PhotoFast is playing the superhero role here today with the AP1000, a little black module with WiFi that accepts incoming AirPlay streams and routes them through to your car’s stereo. From the demo video, it’s obvious that you’re probably going to want to get a professional car audio installer involved to make this happen — and before you ask, no, it won’t do video — but if you’ve got an Apple logo sticker on your rear window, we bet this is exactly how you want to roll. Follow the break to see the AP1000 get surgically implanted in a Mercedes.

Continue reading PhotoFast’s AP1000 takes AirPlay support to your car

PhotoFast’s AP1000 takes AirPlay support to your car originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Nov 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cue the pundits. Nissan’s incoming Leaf has just nabbed an official EPA sticker, with a mind-melting 99MPG “equivalent” rating set to grace every single window. That’ll undoubtedly catch eyes, but it’s also likely to spur a huge debate on what “miles per gallon” truly means when you’re throwing a battery into the mix. We actually had the pleasure of driving one ourselves late last month, but we weren’t able to take off on any extended joyrides to really put MPG claims to the test. At any rate, the 99 rating breaks down to 106MPG in the city and 92MPG on the highway, but there’s quite a bit of fuzzy math here that gas guzzlers aren’t accustomed to considering. Nissan claims that the EPA uses a formula where 33.7 kWhs are equivalent to one gallon of gasoline energy, and that the entity also found the Leaf’s efficiency to be 3.4 miles per kWh. Given that the car has a 24 kWh battery pack and can go 73 miles officially, then the EPA says it could theoretically go 99 miles if it had a 33.7 kWh pack. Still, the Leaf has to await its other label from the FTC, but it’s apt to show a range of 96 to 110 miles of range. Head on past the break for the full presser.

Continue reading Nissan Leaf blessed with 99MPG ‘equivalent’ sticker, roundtable arguments ensue

Nissan Leaf blessed with 99MPG ‘equivalent’ sticker, roundtable arguments ensue originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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