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Nissan sells 3,117 Leaf EVs in May, climbs over 3,000 for first time ever

Chalk up a big win for the Nissan Leaf. In May, the world's most popular electric vehicle sold a record 3,117 units, the first time any pure electric vehicle has sold over 3,000 units in a month in the US (unless Tesla managed that feat but rolled the number into a quarterly report). This marks the 15th month in a row of record Leaf sales and the seventh where the Leaf was the top EV seller in the US. The challenge bar is set for someone to step up to compete with this all-electric wunderkind. Chevrolet did sell over 3,000 Volts once, in August 2013. The Leaf's one long-standing competitor, of a sort, is the Chevy Volt, which used to regularly outsell the Leaf but moved only 1,684 units in May. That's still an increase of 4.8 percent over 2013 but is part of a 4.5 percent decline in year-to-date Volt sales for 2014 compared to last year. The last time the Volt outsold the Leaf was October 2013. Chevrolet did sell over 3,000 Volts once, when it moved 3,351 in August 2013. Let's take another look at those 3,117 Leafs sold last month. They represent a 45.8 percent increase over May 2013, when 2,138 Leaf EVs were sold, so someone is doing something right in Japan and Tennessee. So far, Leaf sales in the US are up 36.4 percent year-to-date, to 10,389 EVs. That's just under half of the 2013 total, and it was accomplished in five months. In 2013, Nissan sold a total of 22,610 Leafs. Anyone want to hazard a guess where the total will be at the end of the year? As always, we'll have our detailed monthly sales write-up including other plug-in vehicles as well as hybrids and diesel car, up soon. For now, though, the big news is big Leaf sales. Read Nissan's press release below. Nissan Group reports May 2014 U.S. sales May 2014 May 2013 % Change Nissan Group Total sales (units) 135,934 114,457 +18.8 Nissan Division May sales 125,558 106,558 +17.8 Infiniti May sales* 10,376 7,899 +31.4 NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Nissan Group today announced total U.S. sales for May 2014 of 135,934 units, an increase of 18.8 percent over the prior year and a May record. Nissan highlights: Nissan Division set a May record at 125,558 sales in the month, an increase of 17.8 percent. This marks a monthly record for Nissan division in 14 of the last 15 months. May was the best-ever month for Nissan LEAF with 3,117 sales, an increase of 45.8 percent over the prior year. In May, LEAF passed 50,000 total U.S. sales since launch, further establishing it as the leader among electric vehicles.

2014 Chevrolet Impala [w/video]

Can A Fleet Queen Become a Fullsize King?
On paper, the Chevrolet Impala is a pretty strong seller, posting annual sales that have hovered right around 170,000 units for the last two years, but it only takes one trip to practically any rental car agency to discover where the majority of those sales have come from. In fact, General Motors told Autoblog that a full 70 percent of Impala sales last year went to fleet companies for things like rental cars and government vehicles. Logic tells us that this is neither good for resale values nor name equity, so Chevrolet is getting ready to roll out an all-new Impala with improved comfort, styling and technology, hoping to turn the tables on its retail-to-fleet ratio.
Chevrolet's sedans have come on quite strong in the last few months with the introduction of the Cruze diesel and the SS sedan, but while these will likely be low-volume sellers, there's more pressure for the new Impala to perform well as GM looks to slash fleet sales and compete with the wide variety of full-size sub-luxury sedans. Riding on a platform shared with the Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac XTS, the 2014 Impala will compete against the Hyundai Azera, Ford Taurus and Toyota Avalon on the more traditional side, while also looking to take a bite out of somewhat sportier models like the Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger twins and the Nissan Maxima. We headed to sunny San Diego to see if this totally new Impala can stand on its own without the assistance of fleet companies and rental agencies. [w/video

Can DARPA hack into a Chevy Impala through OnStar?

An ex-video game wizard named Dan Kaufman tracked a circuitous route to becoming the head of the Software Innovation Division at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA normally makes these pages because of its work with autonomous vehicles and automobile technology that overlaps with military applications, but for the past five years Kaufman and his multiple research teams have been working on creating unhackable software code that could be used in military drones. Part of that work has involved hacking into just about everything else, and as a segment on 60 Minutes reveals, that includes cars. The masterminds discovered a way to hack into OnStar, the General Motors telematics system. After figuring out how to hook into OnStar's emergency communication system, they overwhelmed it with data. While the computer was busy trying to manage the overrun of data, the research team inserted code that took control of the sedan's other computers, giving it control. So while reporter Leslie Stahl tooled around in a parking lot, a DARPA researcher with a laptop would occasionally take control of the car, like by applying its brakes or, conversely, removing the ability for Stahl to use the brakes. Hacking into vehicles has been in the news for years: Car and Driver ran a feature on the various ways cars could be hacked in 2011, two hackers released a car-hacking code at the hacker-fest Defcon in 2013 and demonstrated how it worked on a Toyota Prius and Ford Escape, and German researchers demonstrated how they could hack into BMW's Connected Drive remote-services system last week via an attack on the cars' telematics units. This isn't about GM or Onstar or the future; hacking into cars of all kinds isn't coming, it's here, and it doesn't take the half-billion-dollar annual budget of a small DARPA division to do it. Check out the 60 Minutes video on the CBS site (you can watch the entire video from a mobile device without logging in). The OnStar hacking starts at 6:45, but it's worth watching what leads up to that. News Source: Jalopnik Chevrolet Safety Technology Infotainment Autonomous Vehicles Videos Sedan hacking 60 minutes