Dominique Laure, who is the owner of several freight companies in Loire-Atlantique and Gironde in France, has decided on a new benefit for his staff. Instead of salary raises, he will provide low CO2-producing car at €1 per worked day to his workers. So, 100 out of his 130 employees will pay €250 per year to drive a new, cleaner car. There is a little catch, though.
Mr. Laure has two reasons for this unusual benefit. First of all, it makes financial sense for his companies. Each €2,000 raise would cost him €3,500 because of the extra taxes he would have to pay for that increase. The cars, in comparison, cost him €1,080 each instead, including the car's depreciation, maintenance and bank expenses. The employee and the employer sign a contract in which the employee rents the car from the company at €5 per day, while the employer pays the employee €4 to include advertising for one of Laure's companies on the vehicle. In the end, the cost to the employee is €1 per day.
The chosen model is a Renault Clio with a small diesel engine that produces less than 120 g/km of CO2. Thus the second reason: Laure states that these cars allow his workers' to reduce their carbon footprint, since they mostly drive trucks at work.
We've told you all about Shai Agassi's (above left) ambitious Project Better Place and how PBP has plans to create a charging and battery-swapping infrastructure to support fleets of electric cars in Israel, Denmark and possibly Japan. We've also noted not only PBP's deals with Renault to be the first major auto supplier for the scheme but Renault's repeated announcements of its intention to bring electriccars to America in couple of years from now. Now all of this seems to be coming together and it appears, much to our jaw-dropping surprise, that a city in California may very well lead the way into this brand new age of electric-car driving.
According to the San Francisco Sentinel, the mayor of that fair city, Gavin Newsom (above on right), is in talks with PBP about setting up shop in his town of steep rolling hills. In Israel last week to encourage exchanges between business peoples of that country with those in the San Francisco area, the mayor met with several different executives from Agassi's company. Over lunch with CEO Moshe Kaplinsky, Newsom offered to work with the company if they would consider using his city as a testing ground. Watch the video from a Israeli news interview after the break to hear the mayor discuss the goings-on in his own words.
So you run a small business in Europe and you don't want to spend a lot on transportation; plus, you want to save as much CO2 from going to the atmosphere as you can. Until now, your small panel van options were the Citroën Nemo/Peugeot Beeper or the Fiat Fiorino. Well, add one more to the list: the Renault Kangoo Express Compact. This van replaces the Renault Superfive-based Express, which is derived from the old Renault 5/Le Car; some of these are still running around.
The Renault Kangoo Express Compact will be offered with three engines: One gasoline: 1.6i 8V 90 HP (188 g/km of CO2) and two diesels: 1.5 dCi 70 HP (140 g/km of CO2) and 1.5 dCi 85 HP (135 g/km of CO2). We're likely to see an ECO² label version that gets under 119 g/km of CO2 in the near future in order to benefit from the various tax reduction schemes in Europe. The van comes with all kinds of amenities, such as radio CD, A/C, ABS, EBD, electric steering, navigation system, Bluetooth, front and side airbags..
A few days ago there were rumors floating around about a new agreement between Bajaj Auto and Renault. Sure enough, the two marques have announced a partnership to build Tata Nano rival. They announced that the new vehicle that is under development, named ULC (which probably comes from Ultra Low Cost), will be put on sale in India by 2011 for about $2,500. They expect to sell 200,000 cars per year. A new 400,000 unit factory will be built in Chakan (Maharashtra state). India is the initial target market, but if the US credit markets don't get sorted out the U.S. could be looking for something like this soon too.
Bajaj is India's largest motorcycle manufacturer and Renault has already quite an experience with low-cost vehicles, with the largely successful Dacia Logan. This reopens the debate once more: Having more and more cars on the roads is not good for the planet, but who can withdraw people in developing countries right to drive cars when we've driven them before?
[Source: Nissan, Autoblog en español (Sam Abuelsamid contributed to this post)]
Renault and Nissan are ready to leap head-first into making electric vehicles for the many. At the very least, Renault/Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, is willing to make some Lutzian-style statements. I suppose, following this weekend's public EV demonstration in Israel, it gets easier to promise that the companies would launch "a range of electric cars" in the U.S in 2010 (Europe's time will come in 2011). We've been expecting at least one EV from Renault or Nissan to be brought to market somewhere around that time frame, but a whole range in two years? That's ambitious. Not totally unexpected, but no less ambitious. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this. A range does need to start with at least one vehicle, right? In any case, Californians will get first crack at the Renault/Nissan EV, which Ghosn described as not "a Star Wars prototype. It will be a car for sale."
Renault has been making a lot of EV moves recently. A week ago, Ghosn said that Nissan will become a global leader in affordable electric vehicles, and we've of course been following Renault's emerging partnership with Project Better Place (see demonstration link, above). A less flashy but just as vital part of the puzzle will come from the Automotive Energy Supply Corp partnership between Nissan and NEC-JV, which will start mass producing li-ion automotive batteries next year. So, everything is moving in the right direction for Renault and Nissan; now if someone would just tell Ghosn that there's at least one person (me) who would be totally in favor of an electric car that looks like it belongs in Star Wars.
It could be the quickest vehicle to go from concept to a public, drivable prototype in automotive history. As previewed, "Israelis got a first demonstration Sunday of the electric car that developers hope will revolutionize transportation in the country and serve as a pilot for the rest of the world," began the report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
A parking lot in Tel Aviv hosted the demonstration of the Project Better Place/Renault collaboration. Acceleration was said to be impressive and the silent drive familiar to proponents of electric vehicles was noted in the silver, normal looking sedan. The car is expected to have a range of 125 miles, more than sufficient for most drivers in a nation that's no more than 60 miles wide and 260 long. Haaretz reports that several hundred cars will begin appearing on Israel roads in 2009, with sales to begin in late 2010.
Renault-Nissan's plans to build electric cars is looking more serious by the day. Nissan has announced its intention to build an electric car for Japan and the U.S., and said so in its presentation to the California Air Resources Board last month. Earlier this year, Renault made news signing on to Shai Agassi's Project Better Place plan to produce electric cars for Israel and, more recently, Denmark. Now, according to a Thomson Financial News report in Forbes.com, Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said at a news conference in Portugal, 'We are negotiating to launch an electric car with a Gulf state.'
Israel's desire for electric cars is obvious. A small Middle East state with no oil reserves, it's demand for petroleum finances its enemies. A nation in the Gulf region, presumably with sizable oil deposits, would seem at first glance a less likely candidate to begin to shift toward electricity.
Lessons, perhaps, are being learned from countries as diverse as Norway and Brazil. Each has come to realize petroleum is more valuable as an export commodity than as a transportation fuel. Norway has 50 percent of Europe's oil reserves. Yet, electrics in the country are given incentives as it continues to export petroleum. The Nordic state is where Th!nk is headquartered. Brazil made investments decades ago to move automobiles off petroleum and on to locally-produced sugar cane ethanol. As petroleum has been found within its borders, rather than being burned locally it is shipped to world markets at ever climbing prices, helping mitigate the financial problems associated with petroleum imports plaguing many developing countries.
Small cars aren't necessarily unsafe, as good engineering and quality materials can go a long way towards making up for the size disadvantage that they face in many accidents. Sometimes, though, corners can be cut in order to save a few bucks, and the U.K. agency Thatcham suggests that the seats in small city cars could use some help.
"City cars are not equipped to protect their occupants' necks when they have to absorb the crash energy from larger, heavier vehicles which combined with poor seat design makes whiplash far more likely. Good seat design is not something that should be inherently linked to higher value cars and this latest set of results will hopefully act as a catalyst for vehicle manufacturers to look at improving seat and head restraints design within this important and growing sector," says Matthew Avery, a research manager at Thatcham.
Because city cars spend much of their time in traffic, which is where whiplash is most likely, these latest tests indicate that much more work is required from manufacturers. Not a single mini-car tested performed well enough to earn a "good" whiplash protection rating, while the smart fortwo and Renault Twingo were the only mini's rated as "acceptable."
Deutsche Bank analysts took a serious look at the proposal of Project Better Place for electric cars in Israel and Denmark and came away impressed with its viability. The researchers returned to Germany believing that the Better Place idea would work not only in small countries with extremely high automobile taxes and gasoline prices, but also in the U.S.
As reported at Solveclimate.com, their conclusion states "From checking the Project Better Place business model, we are concluding that a pure electric car should not cost any more than a diesel- or a gasoline-powered car, and in most countries its operating costs should actually be lower."
The proposal, spearheaded by Israeli-American entrepeneur Shai Agassi, envisions a financial separation of the car from its battery, lowering the initial cost of ownership. Following the cell phone model, a monthly charge would pay for the battery and electricity. The electric cars would be manufactured by automakers. Nissan-Renault has already announced it will produce electric cars for the program in Israel and Denmark.
The report not only adds financial establishment credibility to the idea, it contained some news. It suggests that five to ten additional countries will announce similar programs before the end of the year. Perhaps more significantly, it predicts two more manufacturers will announce their intention to produce electric cars to work with the Better Place model. The Israeli new website Globes was given an exclusive copy of the report which appears on the site in Hebrew only. ABG has been following Project Better place closely, most recently posting a video of CEO and Founder Shai Agassi's speech on "The Future of Electric Cars."
Continuing their effort to be sure that all advertisements in the U.K. are "legal, decent, honest and truthful", the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has asked Renault to withdraw an ad for their Twingo which apparently showed leaves being emitted from its tail-pipe, on one of which was written the words 'eco-nomical eco-logical.' The ASA suggested that this advertisement "exaggerated the environmental benefits of the Twingo and was therefore likely to mislead". Renault is complying with this suggestion and is changing the ad so that it would instead direct consumers to their website, where they could then read about what Renault is doing to lower the environmental impact of its vehicles.
You may remember that the ASA has had other run-ins with automakers, such as Lexus and Toyota. As much as we appreciate what various automakers are trying to do in order to clean up their cars, perhaps suggesting that a car is so green that it emits leaves is a bit much. On the other hand, what are the chances that anybody who saw the commercial really took it this literally? Our response? Meh.
Two companies have been chosen to implement the charging infrastructure designed by Better Place. Aran Research and Development Ltd. and Nekuda DM Ltd will develop and install the first of an intended 500,000 charging sites in Israel alone. Hundreds will be installed in 2009. According to the Israeli business website Globes, "Project Better Place's engineering and marketing teams have formulated the design, safety, engineering, and operational features of the recharging stations."
The Better Place charging site is intended to be much more than an electrical outlet. It is meant to create a new paradigm of automobile ownership. Nissan/Renault has committed to making the electric cars without which Shai Agassi's vision for Israel remains a mere scheme. But it would be very welcome If Agassi's plan finds a way to take the apparent burden of battery cost and warranty off the shoulders of car makers and lower the cost of electric car ownership. Of course, $100-plus per barrel oil and the economies of scale of the manufacture of components in electric cars could rapidly disappear the cost difference between internal combustion and plug-in cars.
Gallery: Project Better Place Renault Nissan Signs Deal
Carlos Ghosn, Supreme Allied Commander (SAC) of both Nissan and Renault, took a moment from his busy car launching schedule to promise he would be sending electric cars to America in 2010. We've heard this before, but now the word comes from the very top. Interestingly, Ghosn said that the new California CO2 emission-cutting initiative had given extra impetus for the EV decision, according to this brief article from Agence France Presse (AFP).
While it's quite certain the EV launched stateside will be a Nissan, Europe is likely to receive a Renault-based one with the same technology but with a different "application". Whatever the final styling, we can be sure neither will look anything like the only electric car the two companies brought to Geneva: the Nissan Pivo2 concept (pictured).
One of the arguments frequently made during debates over raising fuel economy standards is that it will force people to drive smaller, less safe cars. The theory is that in a collision between a larger heavier vehicle and a smaller lighter one the heavy one will always come off better. Reality is, as usual, far removed from theory. All modern vehicles are built to withstand the same standard collisions and modern small cars protect their occupants as well as larger vehicles and generally much better than an older larger vehicle. The team from the UK car show Fifth Gear decided to conduct a crash test between an early '90s Volvo 940 Wagon and a three-year-old Renault Modus.
The Modus is B-Class car and was the first such car to get a 5-star rating in the EuroNCAP tests. Volvos, on the other hand, have a long standing and largely deserved reputation for safety. While modern small cars may indeed sustain a substantial amount of damage in a crash as they dissipate the energy, they tend to do a very good job of protecting occupants. One other thing to keep in mind in such mixed crashes is that while the larger vehicle may have more momentum, the lighter car can also be shoved out of the way to some degree, also dissipating energy. Fifth Gear did a 40mph frontal offset test with the Renault and Volvo (that's an 80mph closing speed) and you can check out the video after the jump. There's also a video of a Smart ForTwo doing a similar crash with a Mercedes E-Class, with similar results. Don't be afraid to think small, it probably won't kill you.
Dacia will expand its car lineup with the introduction of the Sandero. The company announced pricing and information for car at the Geneva Motor Show. It will arrive in Western Europe in mid-2008 and will reach UK shores in 2009. The Sandero will compete in Europe's most competitive market: 4-meter hatchbacks. The Sandero is built on the same B0 platform as Logan and features MacPherson-type front and back suspension. Certain versions also come with a front anti-roll bar and keeps the high ground clearance.
The Sandero will be available with two gasoline engines, 1.4 75 HP and 1.6 90 HP and two diesel 1.5 dCi (68 HP and 86 HP versions), all sourced from Renault (these powerplants can currently be seen in the Clio, Modus and Mégane). Dacia claims that the latter engines keep CO2 emissions under 120 g/km, an important threshold in Europe. The engines are tuned to be able to run with lower-quality fuels.
The least cheap car in this list is the famous "low-cost" car created by Renault for its Romanian subsidiary Dacia. One can also find the Logan in Mexico under the Nissan Aprio name. Built in Romania, Turkey, Brazil, India and even Iran, the Logan was designed with low-cost and modern features in mind. This means it shares a lot with the Renault Clio/Modus and the Nissan Micra.
The Logan's sibling include a station wagon version and a hatchback called Sandero. You can buy a Logan with one of three gasoline engines (1.4 MPI, 1.6 MPI and 1.6 16V) good for 75 to 105 HP, with mileage around 31-34 mpg (U.S.) or with one of two versions of the 1.5 dCi diesel sourced from Renault, with 68 and 85 HP and mileage around 50-51 mpg (U.S.).
in some markets, such as Italy, the Logan can be ordered with LPG options, and one specially-tuned Logan participated in the last Challenge Bibendum and showed good green credentials.
Renault-Nissan's plans to build electric cars is looking more serious by the day. Nissan has announced its intention to build an electric car for Japan and the U.S., and said so in its presentation to the California Air Resources Board last month. Earlier this year, 
Deutsche Bank analysts took a serious look at the proposal of 
