Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Volt or LEAF: You Decide

Autoblog is holding a poll to see what Americans prefer, the Chevy Volt or the Nissan LEAF

Right now, Americans prefer the Volt over the LEAF by almost 2 to 1 and even prefer their current ICE over that of the LEAF!  For shame.  But don't get me wrong, on paper I love the Volt and want it to succeed!  I want GM to succeed, not just for the repayment of the federal loan but because they're an American institution.

But I have one more beef, and that's to pick with the Autoblog website itself.  Again, it's a cool website and I think everyone should visit it not just to show their LEAF love.  My problem is that I am trying to post a message but I don't haven an account.  When I try to create the account, I don't get the confirmation e-mail and my post doesn't even appear on the site.  So far I've tried twice and have decided to give up.  Instead, I'll share my only Volt rant here with you, my friends!

No No No!  The Volt doesn't even care about the 50% of Americans whose daily commute is over 40 miles, do they!?  I'm one of them and I'd have loved to buy a Volt if they made my daily commute all electric.  But no, they want me to spend half of my commute charging my battery with OsamaBinLadoline!  @#%@ that!  LEAF all the way baby, or the Tesla S class if it wasn't so pricey!  Volt IFF they get a bigger batter or at least a Diesel generator for gosh sakes!  Gees, yeah, I wanna go for long trips but I don't wanna lug around an ICE for the 3 times a year out of area jaunt when I just need my car mainly to go to and from work 99% of the time.  Can't they get this??

Edit

Just heard back from Autoblog, comment submitted, finally!

Monday, July 26, 2010

Could Nissan improve their webite?

I quite like the Nissan LEAF website (the one for North America) but I do have to admit I have some nits not so much with it but with the amount of public information Nissan is releasing over-all.  As a matter of record, this is a note I've submitted to Nissan in response to a survey they conducted with respect to their web side:

I still want to get more information about the LEAF and
when it will be available in my area (Washington, D.C. &
Suburbs); also, you really should update the information on
my account that says you'll be contacting me by 30 June. 
Clearly you need more time, and that's fine.  What I
suggest as you have some technical wiz go through all
16,384 or so reservations and for those in So Cal, there's
no need to do anything since they're already getting their
Charger inspections and so on updated on your site.  For
those in the rest of CA, WA, OR, AZ and the areas in TN
getting the LEAF in the first run, you should hopefully be
scheduling the inspections there soon so give them a rough
estimate.  For Raleigh, Honolulu and the other second-tier
cities, you should leave them a special note reminding
them they're second tier and will be contacted one all
first-tier accounts are settled.  For everyone else in the
U.S. just mention that they will be able to purchase the
car during general roll-out in spring 2011 with details to
follow once tiers 1 and 2 have been handled (not sure where
Washington, D.C. falls in this; I've heard we're first-tier
by word-of-mouth, but AFAICT we're 3rd tier).  Also, for
Canada, since they appear to be Tier 3, please give them a
similar message (I assume Canada still uses this site since
this is the Nissan North America site, isn't it?)  Finally,
could you PLEASE provide information about the LEAF similar
to the Tesla Roadster in this of their blog entries:
http://www.teslamotors.com/enthusiasts/blog/3859 and
specifically something similar to this excel chart:
https://www.teslamotors.com/display_data.php?data_name=range_table
and if I may be asking could we have a drag tensor over the
car, you know with wind from the forward, right and top
canonical directions?  Okay, I know there I'm asking too
much from your engineers, but it doesn't hurt to ask, does
it?  Finally, would you please release some curves about
heating and cooling the LEAF at different temperatures in
terms of the base load on the battery.  And could that
small Photovoltaic on the roof please run a cooling fan or
something in case I can't plug in at work to reduce the
load on the A/C when I drive home?  Also, when do you
think you're going to hammer down the curb weight?  Ah,
would that I could just have a half-hour with one of your
ichiban engineers!
Now how likely am I to get a response?  Well, let's just say without an e-mail address provided I think never comes to mind, but even if I were to leave one, I think I have more likelihood of affecting things by posting my concerns directly on my blog.