Green Cars

While I am not currently in the market for a new car, I always like to look around the web and see the new offerings from the big brands. While I know the Chevy Volt is all the rave around the web and its going to make some big news when it is finally released, what else is going to be available? The two standouts for me were the Nissan Leaf (which all you clean greens already know about) and a giant let down from Honda.

While Nissan is mostly famous for performance cars like the 370Z and Skyline GTR, they are not so well knows for their green/hybrid powertrains. That's why the 2011 Nissan Leaf, an Electric Vehicle (EV), is a pretty revolutionary for Nissan. The car is basically a slightly redesigned Nissan Versa with a 100% electric powertrain that ranges 100 miles/charge and hits speeds of 90mph. I'm actually pretty impressed with the specs and how clean the car is. I could be wrong, but I think this may be the only big brand all-electric vehicle offering, since Toyota and Honda are hybrids and the Volt has a small displacement gasoline engine, for when the battery runs out. I think the biggest selling point is the $25,280 price tag after federal tax savings; the Toyota Pruis is $22,800 base just to compare.

On the other hand we have the 2011 Honda CR-Z sport hybrid coupe, a remake of the 1990s CR-X with a hybrid powertrain. While the car seems like a nice econobox, the 35mpg rating isn't all that impressive, and to call something a sport coupe with 122 horsepower seems extremely farfetched. To cite an example, the Nissan Versa has the same horsepower, gets 28mpg and its 0-60 times are fairly close (around 9.5 seconds). Anything over 8 sec in 0-60 these days should not be considered a sport anything, even the original CR-X SI with 100 horsepower hit 0-60 in 8.5 sec. I think the car just may be too bloated and Honda should go back to the original formula of light weight cars with relatively powerful and economic VTEC engines.

Just my two cents though - have a good weekend and enjoy the World Cup final! Go Spain!