2012 Nissan 2.0 S on 2040-cars

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Nissan Canada kills Cube, is US next?

Canadians, say goodbye to the quirky Nissan Cube. In fact, it's too late; it's already gone. The question now becomes whether the boxy model gets the axe in the US as well.
Nissan didn't exactly publicize the Cube's Canadian retirement. An Autos.ca reader noticed that the vehicle was no longer listed on the automaker's official site in the Great White North. He tweeted the company about it and was told, "Yes, the Nissan Cube has been discontinued in Canada."
The news certainly makes you wonder what the future for the model is in the US. The Cube isn't exactly a hot seller here, either. According to Nissan's last sales results, it sold just 356 units in April, down 23.9 percent from a year ago, and 1,604 vehicles from January to April, down 33.7 percent. Annual sales were as high as 23,000 units in 2010, but they started dipping as early as 2011.

Demand for electric car rentals unplugged by range anxiety

It's the hurdle that electric vehicles must clear to be launched into the mainstream: range anxiety. But this time it isn't prospective customers who worry about running out of juice, Bloomberg reports, but renters who return to car rental agencies before their lease is up and trade their EVs in for more traditional gasoline-powered autos and gas-electric hybrids.
"People are very keen to try [electric vehicles], but they will switch out of the contract part way through ... they think they can't get to a charging station," says Lee Broughton, head of sustainability at Enterprise. Enterprise customers who rent EVs reportedly trade them in 1.6 days into the rental period on average, which compares unfavorably to the six- to seven-day rental periods of traditional, fuel-burning automobiles.
Christopher Agnew, an analyst at MKM Holdings LLC, says that longer range would help rental customers' range anxiety, especially since they are usually renting vehicles in unfamiliar places.

Bret Michaels Poisons Nissan's commercial trucking ops

Mötley Crüe isn't the only 1980s hair-metal band getting into the world of auto promotion. Poison frontman and reality show star Bret Michaels is following their lead and doing some advertising of his own. Where the Crüe have been all over the airwaves in recent years with a Super Bowl ad for Kia and music licensing with Dodge, Michaels has taken a very different route by becoming the pitchman for Nissan Commercial Vehicles.
The videos run the gamut to advertise predominantly the NV line of full-size vans, but the NV200 shows up a few times too. The star of this new campaign is Michaels' full-length music video (above) for the song Tough Love. It's basically a parody of all of those '80s rock ballads where the bands would slow the tempo down a little and reveal their softer side. Michaels rocks out at the Nissan proving grounds in Stanfield, AZ, while showing off the evaluation process and strutting around like a proper rock frontman. There are also a bunch of shorter videos (below) with the singer highlighting each part of the vans' torture testing. Although, the dialogue in these come off a bit more stilted. With these '80s metal bands getting into advertising, can it be long before Warrant is shilling for Fiat or Ratt for Mazda?