USA March 2013

Stylish turbine alloys in the Tesla Model S

Records Edition.

While December '12 still holds the record for the best selling month in the US, this March came pretty close to beat it, at 7.881 units sold, just 38 units behind last December. As consequence, the Plug-In share rose to 0,48%, more than doubling share of March '12 (0,21%).

With this almost record month there were several models breaking records, starting with this month's leader, the Nissan Leaf, shooting from 653 units in February to 2.236 in March and doubling its sales regarding last year.

Another record breaker, and in this case by the seventh month in row, the Model S from Tesla grows its sales to 2.150 cars, enough to keep him in #1 YTD, an astonishing feat considering it costs at least 60.000$...

Further down the ranking there were more record breaking, starting with the Focus Electric (180 units), the RAV4 EV (133 units) and the fresh kids Accord Plug-In (26 units) and Fusion Energi (295 units).

The early sales from Ford's midsize sedan look promising, this is a model to watch closely in the coming months, just like the Nissan Leaf, it will be interesting to see if it can keep a strong pace in the next months and force GM and Toyota to start discounting more the Volt and the PiP.

Pl	USA	Mar	YTD'13		YTD'12	13 vs '12
1	Tesla Model S	2.150	4.750		N/A	N/A
2	Chevrolet Volt	1.478	4.244		3.915	8,40%
3	Nissan Leaf	2.236	3.539		1.733	104,21%
4	Toyota Prius Plug-In	786	2.353		912	158,00%
5	Ford C-Max Energi	494	1.166		N/A	N/A
6	Mitsubishi I-Miev	31	625		136	359,56%
7	Ford Focus Electric	180	419		2	999,99%
8	Ford Fusion Energi	295	414		N/A	N/A
9	Toyota RAV4 EV	133	212		N/A	N/A
10	Fisker Karma	19	52		a)	a)
11	Honda Fit EV	23	46		N/A	N/A
12	Honda Accord Plug-In	26	45		N/A	N/A
13	Scion iQ EV	30	30		N/A	N/A
14	Smart Fortwo ED		2		2	0,00%
	TOTAL	7.881	17.897		7.253	146,75%

a) data not available

Source: insideevs.com

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Using smartphones to prevent traffic jams

Paul Leroux

Smartphones and driving don’t mix, right? Normally, you would get no argument from me. Driving is the one activity where a half-second lapse in attention can translate into a lifetime of regret.

But you know, there’s more than one way to use a smartphone in a car. Take Honda, for example. They’ve been experimenting with an approach that may help prevent accidents, rather than cause them.

Let’s rewind a bit. A few months ago, I wrote a post on the potential benefits of adaptive cruise control. These benefits include a dramatic reduction of traffic congestion and safer distances between cars.

Well, guess what: it seems that a smartphone app can have much the same effect. Recently, Honda equipped a number of drivers with an app that monitors acceleration and deceleration. When a subject drives in a way that avoids causing a traffic jam, the app screen turns green; otherwise, it shows blue.

Simple enough, right? And yet, the results were dramatic: formation of traffic jams was delayed by up 6 minutes and fuel efficiency shot up by 22%. Not bad for a smartphone app.

I am, of course, skipping a few details. Read more about the study in Tech-On!, an outlet of Nikkei Business Publications.

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