The Leaf will be an ideal car for driving around the city with its 100-mile range. It will also be good for car pooling programs. It seems that Hertz has a very good idea of the range capabilities of each member of their fleet and it might implement a fast charge system to the Leaf so it will be 80% ready to go in just 30 minutes.

A 24 kilowatt hour battery pack for an electric vehicle usually takes 8 hours of being plugged into a 220-volt outlet to be fully charged. It will take longer if you will be using 110-volt outlets.

The hatchback electric Leaf will initially be rolled out by the Japanese car maker by the end of 2010 and expected to go on full swing by 2012. Buyers will be given a fast charge equipment and a 220-volt charger. Nissan is set to monitor the usage of the Leaf owners.

At present, Nissan is among the most aggressive leaders in producing pure electric vehicles and other environmentally-friendly cars. The Leaf is just one of the four electric vehicles on the drawing board of Nissan. Most car producers will be using gas engines to address the range anxiety factor of pure electric vehicles like how the 2011 Chevrolet is designed.

The 2011 Nissan Leaf has been going around potential markets that will see its early launch. Nissan is pushing hard on educating the potential buyers of the car of its features and benefits. The car company is hoping to get about 20,000 reservations before the end of 2010.

Hertz is great for renting “special” things. They have a great Corvette ZHZ too – check it out!

The bold statement aims to hold water to distinguish the first all electric car from Nissan from the hybrid cars roaming the roads today. According to Nissan insiders, the EV will be veering away from the wedge design followed by the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius.

It will be striking as promised. The first noticeable thing of the EV will be the absence of the grille. There is no need for one. The size of the engine will also be a lot smaller so the hood can be expected to be diving down the line of sight for better aerodynamics of the vehcle. Of course, there will also be a plug for recharging the Nissan NuVu to remind everyone that it is not just like any other vehicle on the road.

So far, the drag coefficient of the Nissan EV is at 0.30. The figure is a bit higher than the 0.28 of the Honda Insight and the 0.25 of the Toyota Prius. The design team of Nissan is still tweaking the design to improve the number, but hey, at least it’ll look better than the Honda or the Toyota, right?

The designers of the all electric Nissan vehicle were not given the free reign on how the car should look. It will still follow the platform of Nissan to keep the cost of production down to optimal.

The production of the all electric vehicle also made Nissan the first beneficiary of the $1.1B loan from the US Department of Energy. This will come from the set aside funds amounting to $25B for the development of vehicles using advanced technology.

According to Automotive News, Carlos Tavares, Nissan Motor Co.’s executive vice president for product planning and design, revealed during an event in Detriot that Nissan plans to sell the vehicles and the batteries separately. He also said that the EV model production is cheaper than the gas models in theory. The cost shoots up when you add the cost of the batteries.

While some would immediately think that it would be another stop in the purchasing process, Tavares said that it will not be an unnecessary inconvenience for the consumer and that the cost of ownership will still be the same as that of an internal combustion model, even though the batteries for the EV models are sold separately, because unlike the gas models, there is no need to replenish the pump.

The first Nissan EV model will hit U.S. and Japan in 2010. Brian Brockman, spokesperson for Nissan added that they are currently test driving the EV models on the ground and building their data base about them to be used as a basis for the production of new models.

The Nissan EV models will hit the market in 2010. The first cars will probably be based on the Nissan Mixim concept — a car I liked a lot!