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The 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car is now officially on sale. Over the past several days—beginning with the first delivery in San Francisco we covered this past weekend—Nissan has begun making actual deliveries of the Leaf. Not just to company fleets, public utilities, or those in transportation think-tanks, but to actual consumers.

One of these—the fourth nationally, and the first to take delivery in Oregon (Portland being one of the Leaf’s key initial markets)–is John Duncan, who was presented his car by Mark Perry, Nissan’s director for product planning, and his keys by Joel Fowler of Tonkin Nissan, in Wilsonville, Oregon, outside Portland.

One key difference we’ve already noticed among those interested in the Nissan Leaf versus those thinking about the Chevrolet Volt is a level of early adopter zeal—an EV evangelism of sorts—and Duncan has it.

Is this fervor familiar?

Coincidentally, it’s sounding somewhat like the sort of enthusiastic fervor that Saturn owners developed (and, coincidentally, the Leaf will be built in Smyrna, Tennessee, about 40 miles from Saturn’s Spring Hill home). The last car Duncan, a part-time college instructor, bought was a basic 1997 Saturn SL1 sedan, and in 2000, after becoming interested in EVs for a number of years—perhaps prompted in part by the EV1—he promised himself that his next car would be an EV.

Luckily, Duncan’s SL1 made it; it’s held up so well over the years that he’s going to pass it along to his son as he starts to drive the Leaf.

Duncan commutes 22 miles round-trip each teaching day to a nearby campus. On other days he goes from his suburban Portland home, near the dealership, into downtown Portland—nearly 50 miles round-trip. “I would almost never go more than 50 or 60 miles. Seventy at the most on a very heavy driving day.”

Gridlock-friendly, on the grid

“One of the nice things about the electric car of course is that when you get stuck in Friday-evening 4:45 traffic and you’re at a standstill, you’re not using any gas,” said Duncan. “It’s a really good commuter car. And I feel very good about the fact that my carbon footprint’s down…it’s a socially and politically responsible thing to do.”

The Portland area already has about 50 publicly available 240-volt charging stations, and the Portland area has the first publicly accessible quick-charging station in North America, at public utility PGE’s Portland headquarters. Eventually, with cooperation from Nissan and public utilities, there will be about 1,000 publicly accessible chargers in the region.

“It’s a good thing for the community,” said Duncan. “And I’m going to let any of my friends who wants to, to drive it.”

The other car in Duncan’s household is his wife’s Toyota RAV4, which they need because she’s a ski instructor and they’ll use for longer trips.

Volt vs Prius Plug-In vs Leaf

It wasn’t a no-brainer, says Duncan, who drove the Leaf and got a tour in Hillsboro Oregon a number of months ago. He says he certainly did think about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. “I looked at it, and I thought about it. It just didn’t make sense to me.”

With a base price of $32,780 for the Leaf versus $41,000 for the Volt—and that’s before the $7,500 federal tax credit and any additional state incentives—the Leaf also costs considerably less.

Ultimately, Duncan says that carpool-lane privileges were very important, and when California decided not to allow the Volt that was a significant factor. So was carrying around gasoline and an engine.

He also thought about a Prius or Prius plug-in, but that, Duncan said, seemed like “going to the swimming pool and just putting your feet in…not diving into the water and going swimming.”

And before you say the deck is loaded: Like the other first-round Leaf recipients, Duncan is paying full price for his Leaf and was chosen simply because he was one of the first to reserve, quick to respond to Nissan, and willing to make his delivery a public appearance.

“If I had to haul a lot of kids around to soccer practice like I did when I was younger, it might be a different story,” he confesses, referring to those other cars. “But right now, this is exactly the right kind of car for me. And I think it is for a lot of people.”

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Auto executives always want you to buy their cars, today. That goes without saying.

But it’s slightly less common for them to say, in effect, “This is the month to buy, ’cause we’re going to be discounting the heck out of ’em.”

Nonetheless, that was the message from Bob Carter, Toyota’s group vice president and general manager, about the company’s quintessential hybrid-electric vehicle the Prius.

At the end of a press call two weeks ago to discuss November’s sales, Carter said December “will be the month” in which to buy a new Prius, because Toyota finds itself overstocked with the hybrid in some markets, including southern California.

Several factors play into the oversupply. First, the end of tax incentives in Japan that favored high-efficiency cars led sales in that market to drop off, and Prius production that had formerly supplied Japan was freed up to build cars for the States instead.

Second, with gasoline prices staying relatively low, sales of all hybrids have stayed flat or fallen even as the overall U.S. auto market gains momentum after two years of downturn.

Sales of the Prius fell 2 percent compared to the previous year, though the car still accounts for half the hybrids sold in the country.

To clear out its stocks, Toyota is planning an aggressive marketing, finance, and incentive program for leftover 2010 Prius models and new 2011 models as well.

Prices for the 2011 Toyota Prius hybrid start at $23,050 for the Prius II package, which is the least expensive Prius model offered to individual buyers.

How aggressive will Toyota be? “Our national program will be 2.9% financing and a very attractive lease,” Carter said in trade publication Ward’s Auto. “It’ll be the most aggressive (Prius) marketing we’ve had.”

You heard the man. If you want to buy a Prius hybrid, this may be the month to do it. Especially if you live in southern California.

[Ward’s Auto]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Today’s small cars are better than they’ve ever been, even if few of them are among the EPA’s all-time gas mileage champs.

And spurred by tighter fuel-economy laws, 40 miles per gallon on the highway is becoming the new target for subcompact and even compact cars.

There’s just one little problem: Not only are 40-mpg models not selling particularly well, the whole small-car segment is anemic at best.

As auto sales have started to recover, the fastest growing segment is midsize sport utilities and crossovers. According to sales data from Ward’s Auto, small cars have been the only segment to decline in sales even as sales rose overall. (All data cover the 12 months from October 2009 through September 2010.)

Declines of 25 percent…or more

In fact, sales of the much-praised 2010 Honda Fit fell a remarkable 26.6 percent, with the older 2010 Toyota Yaris declining more than 30 percent. Sales across the Scion brand, which offers only small cars, plummeted 30.7 percent, while Smart was down 63 percent and Suzuki lost essentially half its sales.

The 2011 Ford Fiesta, new this year, “isn’t setting the sales world on fire,” in the words of Cars.com. The optional trim level that rates the Fiesta at 40 mpg on the highway doesn’t seem to have helped much.

Hybrid sales, too, fell 3.8 percent for 2010 model year offerings. The car that accounts for more than half of all hybrids sold here, the 2010 Toyota Prius, was in short supply just 18 months ago but is now easily available on dealer lots.

Gas prices, of course

The culprit, of course, is essentially stable U.S. gasoline prices–which remain at levels far lower than those in much of the rest of the world.

It’s a truism that new-car buyers generally opt for the largest, best-equipped vehicle they think at the time that they can afford. Not every buyer, but most of them. And that seems to apply equally in Europe and Asia too.

New entries regardless

Several new compact cars are entering the market, or about to. The 2011 Chevrolet Cruze is now in dealerships, the 2011 Hyundai Elantra will arrive shortly, and the eagerly awaited 2012 Ford Focus will land in a matter of months.

Then there are the plug-in cars, albeit in small volumes: the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2011 Nissan Leaf. Despite high purchase prices, they’re essentially sold out for the year. Their real test won’t come until 2013, when much higher volumes are available and waiting lists will have been sated.

What will it take?

But it may take the next spike in gasoline prices before U.S. car buyers look again at small and subcompact cars.

In the summer of 2008, remember, when gas prices soared to $4 a gallon or more, buying behavior changed so abruptly that for several months, the mix of models sold would have–if continued–met the 2016 fuel economy standards a full seven years earlier.

But then gas prices ebbed, and gradually U.S. buyers returned to larger vehicles. Which poses a question: What would it take to raise sales of subcompact and 40-mpg vehicles?

Leave us your thoughts in the Comments section, below.

[Kicking Tires, Ward’s Auto]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Production of the world’s first range-extended electric car is now a reality.

Today, the first shipment of 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric cars left the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. The cars are bound for dealers and buyers in the initial launch markets: California, Texas, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Today’s shipment comes exactly four years after Chevrolet began briefing the press, under embargo, about the Chevrolet Volt concept car it would unveil at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show. That concept became the 2011 Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle.

Chevrolet publicity included the usual carefully-crafted corporate statement, couched in a language very much like English. “Today is a historic milestone for Chevrolet,” said Tony DiSalle, the latest marketing director for the 2011 Volt.

“We have redefined automotive transportation with the Volt,” he continued, “and soon the first customers will be able to experience gas-free commuting with the freedom to take an extended trip whenever or wherever they want.”

Chevrolet said it expects to ship 160 vehicles this week, in contrast to the very small handful of the first 2011 Nissan Leaf electric cars to be delivered to buyers in a few cities before the end of the year. The very first 2011 Leaf was delivered to a retail buyer in San Francisco on Saturday.

Fifteen pre-production Volts were delivered earlier this year to electric-vehicle advocates, technology enthusiasts, and other influential early adopters who formed the Volt Customer Advisory Board. They are taking part in a 90-day evaluation of the vehicle and its associated 240-Volt charging station.

The 2011 Chevy Volt is the only mass-produced electric car being manufactured in the U.S. Its 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack provides roughly 40 miles of all-electric driving, after which a 1.4-liter gasoline engine switches on to generate power that operates the electric drive motor.

Total range from both modes is up to 379 miles, Chevrolet says.

[Chevrolet]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Ford’s first all-electric passenger vehicle, the 2012 Focus Electric, has just received its list of initial launch markets. Totaling 19 cities in all, the vehicle will roll out across the country with Nissan LEAF-like targets for range and performance.

Ford says the Focus Electric will be shooting for “up to 100 miles of zero C02 emissions, gas free driving on a full charge” of its liquid-cooled lithium battery pack. That’s about what we’ve come to expect of the only other mass-market pure EV announced to date, the Nissan LEAF. But unlike the LEAF, the Focus EV won’t be on the market until late 2011.

The first cities to get the vehicle will be: Atlanta, GA; Austin and Houston, TX; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Orlando FL; Phoenix and Tucson, AZ; Portland, OR; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Richmond, VA; Seattle, WA; and Washington D.C.

Those markets, aside from Atlanta, Austin, and Houston, mark the largely East- and West-Coast areas you’d expect for such a green vehicle, though the three Southern markets aren’t unexpected, as they’re among the most forward-looking cities in terms of transportation outside the rim states. Ford says it chose its launch markets on a range of criteria including existing buying trends, collaboration with utilities and government to help ensure the infrastructure necessary will be in place, and Ford’s own outreach programs to help publicize and familiarize the vehicles with consumers.

The 2012 Ford Focus Electric will be built at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, MI, on the same production line as the regular gas-powered Focus, with a target sale date of “late 2011.”

[Ford]

This story originally appeared at All Cars Electr

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