Nissan Leaf NISMO RC 2011 New York Autoshow

There has been a lot of conversation recently about electrical autos and racing, with some even speaking about introducing the technologies into the F1 stage. Nissan, on its element, has a lot to acquire in terms of awareness presented the brands emphasis on the improvement of committed electric automobiles like the Leaf.

Nissan Leaf NISMO Photo

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Volt and Leaf Fail to Topple Honda Civic GX From Green Book List

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a Washington-based nonprofit group financed by foundations, electric utilities and state and federal agencies, released its annual list of the 12 greenest vehicles of the model year on Tuesday. With five models having displaced 2010 honorees, this year’s list differs markedly from last year’s group.

With the Nissan Leaf electric car and Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid now being delivered in the United States, one would think they would duke it out on the group’s list for top honors, too. Not so.

The Leaf earned second place in this, the council’s 14th Green Book annual ranking. As for the Volt? It managed a 12th-place finish, while topping the list for the eighth consecutive year was the Honda Civic GX — a limited-production model that burns compressed natural gas and that was expected to be available for retail sales nationwide in 2012.

In between are conventional hybrids and vehicles with old-fashioned gasoline-combusting engines. In fact, six of the vehicles on the list use only internal-combustion engines.

How can this be? The council uses a novel, holistic method of calculating the slippery notion of greenness, one that owes little to fuel-efficiency or tailpipe-emissions considerations made by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We consider not just what emissions are coming out of the tailpipe while the vehicle is running,” said Therese Langer, the group’s transportation director, in a telephone interview. “The E.P.A. would consider the Leaf a zero-emissions vehicle because electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions,” she said.

The so-called upstream emissions of an electric vehicle, however, can be substantial, she said, depending on where and how its electricity is generated. Electricity produced hydroelectrically, for example, will generally produce far lower carbon emissions than energy produced by burning coal.

But the council methodology also includes emissions associated with the generation of the electricity used to power a battery; the production of raw materials like steel and aluminum — and in an E.V.’s case, a lithium-ion battery unit; and its eventual disposal.

This was the first year in which the group incorporated emissions data associated with battery manufacture and disposal, for which it used the GREET model created by Argonne National Laboratory, an Energy Department lab. This explains why hybrids, which rely on power generated by electric motors and stored in batteries, claimed just three of the top 12 spots this year, compared with five in 2010.

The 12 greenest vehicles for 2011, from top to bottom, are:
• Honda Civic GX
• Nissan Leaf
• Smart Fortwo cabriolet and coupe
• Toyota Prius
• Honda Civic Hybrid
• Honda Insight
• Ford Fiesta SFE
• Chevrolet Cruze Eco
• Hyundai Elantra
• Mini Cooper
• Toyota Yaris
• Chevrolet Volt

For more information and the listings of the “Greenest” and “Meanest,” as well as best-in-class lists from the council, visit its Greenercars.org Web site.

Source;
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/volt-and-leaf-fail-to-topple-honda-civic-gx-from-green-book-list/

Zero-Emission Vehicle Regulations Get Tougher for 2012 - Feature

Here's an interesting read....
California Dreaming: The new CARB diet.
BY KEITH BARRY, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MORGAN SEGAL, ROY RITCHIE, AND THE MANUFACTURERS, ILLUSTRATION BY SEAN MCCABE January 2011

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is trying to use a version of a “cap-and-trade” policy to stimulate automakers to build Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEVs). CARB has mandated that starting in 2012, major automakers will have to produce a certain number of ZEVs. If an automaker can’t build enough to satisfy the regulation, it will be able to purchase credits from those that make more ZEVs than are required, thus covering its own shortfall. While it may sound onerous, it may also sound familiar—the latest ZEV mandate grew out of more than 20 years of CARB regulations. And during that time, CARB learned that the government can’t force engineers to build new technology, just as automakers learned how to use the regulatory process for their own good.

A Mandate With Destiny

Two decades ago, gas was cheap and electric-car technology had languished since the early-Eighties fuel crisis. Aside from a niche market of environmentalists and early adopters, the general public wasn’t interested in a car with a limited range and a high MSRP. Still, California had a pollution problem, and CARB, somewhat speciously, sought to reduce smog by encouraging automakers to build tiny volumes of  ZEVs. In 1990, CARB announced that it would require that ZEVs make up two percent of every automaker’s fleet by 1998, increasing to 10 percent by 2003. As the technology advanced, went the rationale, costs would come down and ZEVs would gain widespread acceptance. Automakers balked, arguing that it was impossible to build that many commercially viable ZEVs in eight years. CARB and automakers spent the better part of  the ’90s in court.

A compromise came in 2003 when CARB replaced the strict mandate with incentives for manufacturers to build ZEVs. Automakers that sold cars in California now had to earn a certain amount of yearly credits by building low-emission vehicles lest they incur fines. By 2008, 10 other states that follow CARB regulations (Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont) had adopted the incentive-based ZEV mandate.

Automakers earned full credits by building ZEVs and partial credits for hybrids and gas-powered Ultra Low-Emission Vehicles (ULEVs). If an automaker couldn’t earn enough credits with its own product, it could buy credits from a company with an excess of credits, essentially subsidizing the creation of ZEV technology without assuming the risk of developing it in-house. Carmakers that didn’t comply could be fined $5000 per credit not produced, though CARB has yet to levy a penalty. For the past seven years, most manufacturers met the mandate with a mix of hybrids and gas-burning ULEVs, plus a few hydrogen fuel-cell or electric cars. Automakers negotiated the buying and selling price of credits on their own, reporting sales to CARB after the fact.

Cutting Carbs

Starting in 2012, CARB regulations get stricter, requiring large-volume automakers that sell more than 10,000 vehicles in California yearly—currently Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, GM, and Chrysler—to produce among them a total of 7500 ZEVs between 2012 and 2014, a figure that rises to 25,000 for the 2015-to-2017 time frame. Also starting in 2012, each individual automaker must earn a certain number of ZEV credits depending on its sales numbers. A percentage of those ZEV credits must be “pure,” or earned solely from the sale of ZEVs and not from selling hybrids or gas-burning ULEVs. Automakers that don’t sell that many ZEVs must buy “pure” ZEV credits from other manufacturers. Credits expire after three years.
“We want people to earn credits and use them,” says Anna Gromis-Wong, an air-pollution specialist at CARB. “We want to get out of a demonstration phase.”

Currently, only all-electric vehicles such as the Tesla Roadster and the upcoming Nissan Leaf—plus hydrogen fuel-cell cars such as Honda’s FCX Clarity and Mercedes-Benz’s F-cell—meet the ZEV regulation. The much-touted Chevy Volt doesn’t count as a ZEV because it has an onboard internal-combustion engine. Carmakers seem to be tolerant of the new regulations. Whether it’s to reduce airborne pollutants, cut greenhouse-gas emissions, or wean Americans from foreign oil, it seems that this time around—like it or not—ZEVs are here to stay.

For the rest of the article with pic's, follow the link;
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/11q1/zero-emission_vehicle_regulations_get_tougher_for_2012-feature