Leaf, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company that offers a point-of-sale solution based on its own Android tablet for small- to medium-sized businesses, announced that it will soon launch an app store for its service. The company, as its CEO Aron Schwartzkopf told me earlier this week, aims to build an ecosystem for offline merchants that allows them to connect to their consumers at the point of… → Read More
Leaf, a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup, is aiming to make the experience of paying in a shop more modern with paperless receipts for customers and transaction data in the cloud for merchants.
Backed with $1 million in seed funding, the company just kicked off an alpha with more than a dozen merchants in Boston. It enters a super competitive and complicated space with many other players like… → Read More
We like the Leaf. It’s not a good choice for everyone, but it’s a great second car or city car, set back the most perhaps by the trouble one has to take in charging it. At home you are advised to spring for a high-capacity outlet, and abroad you must plan your trips to coincide with existing charge points. Anything that can make adding power to these cars easier will increase their… → Read More
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and 4R Energy Corporation announced today that the two companies have developed and installed a new EV charging solution that combines renewable solar energy and high capacity lithium-ion batteries. The system was recently installed for testing at Nissan’s global headquarters in Yokohama, Japan.
The system uses the solar cells to collect the energy and a large lithium-ion… → Read More
If the road is smooth enough, you can hear birds chirping while you’re going 35 mph. With the windows up. The Nissan Leaf is that quiet. When going less than 30 mph there’s just a slight electric whine from the powertrain and above 45 mph the wheels produces a steady hum. But there’s this special spot between 30 and 45 where the two combine in a way that they cancel each other… → Read More
I’m a few days into my week with the Nissan Leaf. It’s a fun car; I can say that much so far. My plan later today is to test the range by driving in increasingly smaller circles around my house until the battery is nearly depleted. A full review is coming next week, but until then, here’s a quick look at the simple Leaf iOS owner’s app. Nissan launched the iOS app launched… → Read More
A brand new Nissan Leaf rolled out off a car carrier and into my life earlier today. I plan on spending a good deal of time with this red devil over the coming week. You see, here at CrunchGear, there’s been a raging format war of sorts. Devin, a hipster of a moderate degree, is very fond of the Nissan Leaf. He’s proclaimed on numerous occasions that an EV is perfect car for him and he’s going to… → Read More
Remember that plug-in Prius we drove for a bit? Yeah, Toyota is bringing that technology to more models. The Prius has long been the popular hybrid vehicle but cars like the Volt and Leaf are stealing a good deal of the public’s love thanks to their plug-in ability. It seems Toyota is looking to recapture some of its lost karma by shifting the entire Prius line to plug-in hybrids by the 2014 model… → Read More
Another day, another car of the year award. The Nissan Leaf just won the World Car Of The Year award at the New York International Auto Show. An unnamed World Car juror notes Leaf’s tech specs of 100 mile range, 8 hour battery charge and that it’s the first mass-produced 5 seat EV hatchback. “It feels just like a normal car, only quieter.” This award is now in it’s… → Read More
Created for “a series of special demonstration appearances,” this Leaf Nismo RC is a racing-based rethinking of the Leaf design and powertrain. They’ve shaved off about 40% of the weight, bringing it down to just over 2000 lbs, lowered it to have only 2.4″ of clearance, and of course switched it over to rear wheel drive.
The performance is… well, we can’t expect too much, since it’s more or… → Read More
Although I’m excited about the Leaf and EVs in general, the launch hasn’t exactly been smooth. There have been shortages, range issues, and now some sort of bug with the AC unit that’s causing some cars to not start at all. It’s unclear how widespread the problem is, or what Nissan intends to do, but the consensus seems to be “if your Leaf gives you a weird error on… → Read More
Poor Kelangst: he or she is the first person ever in the whole world to announce that they’ve depleted their Nissan Leaf’s batteries, a problem bolstered by the fact that some range calculations for the Leaf are inaccurate until you’ve driven the car a few hundred miles. The post, in which Kelangst writes “Part of me is amused that I may go down in history as the first dumbass to drive the car… → Read More
The Nissan Leaf is a pretty neat car. It has no gas tank or combustion engine. Instead, it’s powered by lithium-ion batteries and an 80kW electric motor. It lasts up to 100 miles on one charge. Unfortunately, the the Leaf isn’t sporty or fun to drive. The only thrill you get is from driving one of the first EVs on the road. Nissan, however, is capable of making some pretty good sports cars… → Read More
There’s a lot of buzz out there surrounding EVs; why shouldn’t there be? So far, the mass marketed EVs: the Volt and the Leaf, with the Focus Electric and Tesla Model S on the way, are pretty exciting. The offerings seem to be pretty solid, but as of right now, the cars aren’t selling in huge numbers. Adding to the gloomy forecast, a panel of experts thinks EVs are over-hyped and Obama’s plan to… → Read More
Never before has an EV been European Car of the Year; this year the Nissan Leaf gets it. Similar to the North American Car of the Year, which the Chevrolet Volt won, the European COTY is chosen by auto journalists; 58 of them from 23 European countries. The contest was very close. The Leaf rang up 257 points from the journos, besting the Alfa Romeo Giulietta by only 9 points. So why did the Nissan… → Read More
Being the first affordable all-electric car on the market, the Leaf was kind of guaranteed to be a big seller. But their way of going about selling the thing seems to have given their customers unrealistic expectations of when their cars would actually arrive. People have been given extremely vague promises of when their car will arrive (“4-7 months”?), and theories have arisen in the community to… → Read More
When Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier KDDI announced its winter and spring line-up back in October, the company also showed a very Kindle-like e-reader. Dubbed Biblio Leaf SP02, the e-ink device was introduced with an open price model, no exact release date and just a few specs – until today. → Read More
While I’m sure the guys at Nissan were crossing their fingers, hoping for a 100MPGe rating, the EPA either had other ideas, or didn’t plan for three-digit numbers on their window stickers. Maybe the new ones will change that, but for now the poor Leaf is stuck with a paltry 99MPGe rating. Wait, that’s pretty good. → Read More
The Leaf I drove a couple months back was more or less final, with only some small adjustments here and there yet to be effected. But some specs have remained in question as the consumer-grade EV entered manufacturing. Nissan has cleared up the matter, mostly anyway, with a nice new spec sheet.
Here are some highlights from the official announcement. → Read More
Toshiba and Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier KDDI announced [JP] the Biblio Leaf SP02 for the Japanese market yesterday, an e-reader that features a 6-inch monochrome screen (16 shades) with 800×600 resolution. The device has 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity and supports XMDF/PDF/EPUB files. → Read More
Well, there it is. The 2013 Infiniti EV. Looks great, eh? The press release says it will “be a stylish, high performance five-seat luxury vehicle with zero emissions technology.” So in other words, it will be a Nissan Leaf done-up in stylish sheet metal, which will no doubt carry quite a premium. [Infiniti via cnet] → Read More
Hope you got your Leaf already ordered because otherwise you’re out of luck, hippie. Nissan just stopped taking orders for its electric sedan now that there are 20,000 orders. That was the plan all along, however, Nissan didn’t expect to hit this mark until December, which clearly states there’s a demand for a polished electric vehicle. Hear that, Chevy? Your Cruze EV better hit American dealers. → Read More
Want to drive the Volt or Leaf for just a day or week? Don’t feel like paying large for a car that hasn’t run its course? Call up Hertz and rent one. That’s right, Hertz has just announced that it plans to rent out EVs through its car rental and car sharing operations. Zipcar take note. → Read More
Some say that even full frame DSLRs aren’t as good as film, because they lack the resolution. That was true, and if you were a professional landscape photographer you used a medium or large format film camera. Leaf saw that the medium format film camera market really didn’t have a decent camera back, so they developed a 80 megapixel camera back. → Read More
It seems that the Chevy Volt will soon have competition from within its own ranks. General Motors is said to begin fleet testing a rather potent Cruze EV next month in South Korea. US availability is still up in the air apparently, but if all goes well, chances are GM will be the latest automaker to offer a pure EV vehicle like the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV. → Read More
I just had the opportunity to test-drive the new Nissan Leaf here in sunny Seattle, and had enough time with the car to garner some first impressions, take some pictures, and shoot a little video. The Leaf, as you are probably aware, is Nissan’s new plug-in electric vehicle, and the first of the new generation of consumer EVs to be released here in the States. Sure, you’ve got the… → Read More
Nissan‘s Leaf is almost ready to be picked. The company announced its all-electric car will be available to buy as early as December, but only for those in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee. Other parts of the country will have to hold their horsepower a little bit longer.
Nissan chose to release to those five states first because they’re home to the EV project, the world’s… → Read More
Nissan has decided that Hawaii will be in the first wave of Leaf-enabled states. They say (truthfully, I think) that it’s because of Hawaii’s commitment to green power and all that. Yes, very good. Lots of solar. But, as Treehugger notes, Hawaii is also a rather small island where the range limits of the Leaf won’t really be apparent during the critical launch period. It’d be like if they launched… → Read More
I’ve always been somewhat afraid of medium format. When my friend was shooting medium format film, it seemed like such a hassle, but when I saw the shots I could see why people do it. I think it’s probably the same deal for medium format digital. What are you going to do with 56 megapixels and 16-bit color depth? But there’s something about having that amount of data, setting up… → Read More
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