Archive for the ‘chattanooga’ Category

Listen up, early adopters and EV fans. If you're one of the first 5,000 buyers of the 2012 Nissan LEAF that was just announced this week, it looks like you'll get a home-based charger as part of the deal.

Arizona-based eTec has been selected for a $99.8 million grant and will exclusively supply the first Nissan LEAF EV buyers with chargers.

eTec said that it will be the "largest deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure in U.S. history."

The tech company intends to cover Corvallis, Eugene, Portland, and Salem, Oregon; Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville, Tennessee; Phoenix, Arizona; San Diego, California;...

As the dealership networks for Chrysler and GM are being quite painfully trimmed, Volkswagen’s dealer network is doing just fine, according to Volkswagen of America president and CEO Stefan Jacoby, and all of its individual dealerships remain profitable.

Volkswagen now has about 580 dealerships in the U.S.; only two have gone bankrupt over the past year, Jacoby says, but both were due to difficulties associated with another brand/automaker. In the U.S., VW has largely weathered the poor economic climate, so far, better than most other automakers and has broadened its share of the market over the past year, with 2.0 percent of overall U.S....

In remarks to the automotive and environmental press last week in Seattle, Volkswagen of America president and CEO Stefan Jacoby said that while the automaker is considering electric vehicles along with other alternatives, he does not see EVs or advanced plug-ins becoming a significant portion of the market within the next decade.

“We cannot expect in the next ten years a major change,” said Jacoby, who said that even if electric vehicles become a significant portion of the market, they “will not be affordable to the American middle class.” And that’s before considering the obstacles related to safety, reliability, and durability of battery...