Hasta La Gadget!

Surprise of all wonders, the Nissan Leaf has suffered another delay, but this time there’s at least an amusing anecdote to quote while you wait. You see, The Northern Echo quotes a Nissan spokeswoman as saying that the Leaf’s backup warning signal emits a loud beep, but UK law requires that such sounds be disabled between the hours of 11PM and 6AM. “The audible system on the Leaf did not allow for that to be done, so the beeping sound is being removed entirely before the cars can be driven on roads in this country,” Nissan said, which will result in a “slight delay” in shipping the cars from the company’s Japanese plant. Amusingly, US law actually requires electric cars to make noise these days.

Nissan Leaf delayed in UK, backup warning signal to blame originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Autoblog Green  |  The Northern Echo  | Email this | Comments

We’re hearing from… well, let’s call them “people familiar with the matter” that HTC’s Thunderbolt — a phone that’s supposed to be Verizon’s first with LTE — is experiencing positively miserable battery life that’s making it difficult for testers to avoid carrying a second phone around as a backup. How bad? Two to three hours from full to empty in some cases. Of course, we wouldn’t be surprised if battery life was really bad with the LTE radio left on — the EVO 4G wasn’t much different at launch with WiMAX lit up — but the word on the street is that the power situation is largely responsible for the delays we’ve been seeing. In fact, our source tells us the phone is currently working on its sixth retail delay at the moment. More on this situation as we get it.

Update: We’ve just heard from another trusted tipster that there’s definitely a new firmware in the works to address battery life and signal issues (which — you guessed it — are interrelated). Thanks, HTC Kid!

HTC Thunderbolt said to have terrible battery life, might explain delay? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

We were somewhat taken aback when Kno confirmed its textbook tablet had been delayed without a word on when production would resume, but the company now says pre-orders will experience up to two months’ delay before they ship out, and not all of them will. eBookNewser and CrunchGear report that shipments could be delayed until as late as April 14th, and that the first shipment will be restricted “to a limited number of students and teachers.” Kno still hasn’t provided a reason for the delay, but we think that the newly closed-off website says a lot. “You now need an invitation to get a Kno,” it reads, “There aren’t enough to go around.”

Kno says some tablets will ship within 60 days, doesn’t explain pre-order delay originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CrunchGear  |  eBookNewser  | Email this | Comments

You may remember that we had an oh-so-brief hands-on with the Clamcase back at CES, and at that time we were promised a review unit the following week. Well, here we are a month later and we still don’t have our unit, and according to some unhappy tipsters neither do those who preordered all the way back in December. We spoke with a rep to get to the bottom of the matter and got some updates on the situation to share with all you eager pre-orderers.

Things got off to a bit of a rough start when the initial January ship date slipped to February, and although an email was sent to preorder customers indicating a few week delay, credit cards were still charged. Apparently, a manufacturing issue early on rendered a small batch of the earliest units un-chargeable, though some of these units made their ways into customers’ hands. We’re told that these problems have since been solved and that units are rolling off the Texas factory lines daily, but we’ve also gotten reports of bunk tracking numbers and ‘shipments’ that never arrive. The last piece of the puzzle is the suspicious disappearance of a discussion thread on the company’s official Facebook page, which apparently got so heated that lawsuits were threatened. We’re told that it was “accidentally taken down while the page was being reorganized”, but we still cannot locate it ourselves. Not all is wrong in the world though, as some Twitter spelunking has revealed that real life people have received real life units in at least some cases, so our best bit of advice would be to either hit the company up for a status report or simply move along to one of the many other iPad keyboard case options available to lighten your wallets. We’ve been assured that our unit should arrive sometime shortly, so stay tuned for the next installment of the Clamcase Chronicles coming in the near future!

Debunk: Clamcase now shipping, manufacturing problems remedied originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Bad news for Leaf lovers. Back in December Nissan representative Tim Gallagher said “By the end of summer, our goal is to have everyone in their car.” That would have meant 20,000-odd Leafs shipped before leaves start falling from trees, but now Nissan North America’s Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing Brian Carolin thinks we won’t even see that many until next year. “I think 20,000 will be too high,” he said, referring to total deliveries for 2011. “You just have to make this launch absolutely perfect. It’s not a numbers game.” Indeed it isn’t, it’s an expectations game, and how much lower can they go?

Nissan backs off 2011 Leaf delivery promises, expects ‘a few hundred’ sold in February originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 11:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink GM-Volt  |  The Detroit News  | Email this | Comments