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Recharge Wrap-up: Car2go launches in Brooklyn, Green Fleet Car of the Year Award announced

The Car2go carsharing service is starting operations in Brooklyn next month. Beginning October 25, the service will offer 400 Car2go edition Smart Fortwo vehicles for point-to-point travel. Members pay a one-time sign-up fee, and are charged by the amount of time the use the vehicle (fuel and insurance is free). Drivers can find a car using the Car2go app or website, and can return the car to any non-metered parking spot within the 36-square-mile Brooklyn Home Area. Car2go is offering free membership and 30 minutes of credit for those who sign up early with a special promotional code. Learn more in the press release below. Renault and the Eco2charge consortium are working to bring better EV charging to France. They are providing research and development aimed at turning simple charging stations into "fully fledged energy ecosystems" through a smart grid. This grid would coordinate charging, consumption and energy storage in a way that increases efficiency and decreases cost. Read more in the press release below. The Renault-Nissan Alliance could source EV batteries from suppliers other than Nissan, according to CEO Carlos Ghosn. This news comes after recent questions of whether or not Nissan would scale back battery production in the US and UK. Ghosn says, "At the moment, we continue to produce our own batteries and we are open to outside sourcing, period." He also denies any plans to shutter Nissan's battery production facility in Tennessee. One source of batteries the alliance will look to is Korea's LG Chem. Read more at Automotive News Europe. The first-ever Green Fleet Car and Truck of the Year Awards will be presented at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The presentation on November 20 will be part of the LA show's Connected Car Expo. Nominees are selected by Bobit Business Media, with finalists picked by readers of Green Fleet, Automotive Fleet, Work Truck and Business Fleet magazines. The winners will be chosen based on performance, fuel economy, emissions, safety, capacities and other similar factors. Read more in the press release below. car2go Heads To Brooklyn Brooklyn To Be First To Launch Point-To-Point Carsharing Service In New York City Area On October 25th car2go North America LLC, the fastest-growing global carsharing company, announced today that it will be launching its pioneering carsharing service in Brooklyn on October 25th, marking Brooklyn as car2go's 29th market and the very first in the New York City area.

Nissan Leaf has 2nd-best sales month ever, Chevy Volt does a 2013 repeat [UPDATE]

UPDATE: The official press release says that "Volt [sales were] up 7 percent," but Randy Fox let AutoblogGreen know that this is simply due to a change in the fleet/retail mix between March 2013 and 2014. The actual number sold was exactly the same in the two months. A month ago, Nissan's director of EV sales and marketing, Toby Perry, said he expected to see the Leaf's sales momentum continue into March. It wasn't a big leap, since January and February were slow sales months in 2013 (around 640 each) before a big climb to 2,200 in March. In 2014, the first two months of the year were better (around 1,300 each) but Nissan can still be happy that the Leaf just had the best March ever and its second-highest sales month ever, with 2,507 sold. That's a 12.1 percent increase from 2013 and Perry said in a statement to AutoblogGreen that one reason is all of the buyers who are becoming evangelists for the vehicle. "We've also seen an increase in showroom traffic as we enhanced our marketing presence in March," he said. Nissan pointed to cities like Washington, DC, Raleigh-Durham, NC and urban areas in Texas as strong Leaf markets last month. On the Chevy Volt front, January and February were also slow months in 2014, down roughly half from the 2,000-ish the plug-in hybrid was selling at the end of 2013. For 2014, sales were up slightly from the first two months of the year and Chevy spokesman Randy Fox told AutoblogGreen that the March number was "pretty flat, year-over-year." Even with that warning, we were surprised to see the total come in at 1,478. Why's that? Because the total for March 2013 was ... 1,478. So, yeah, that's pretty steady even if there were 26 selling days in March period this year compared to 27 last year. As always, our more complete report of last month's green car sales will be coming soon. News Source: General Motors, Nissan Green Chevrolet GM Nissan Electric Hybrid PHEV ev sales

Mitsubishi Motors halts some SUV sales in Japan as MPG scandal grows

Mitsubishi's fuel-economy scandal is going from bad to worse. First, the Japanese automaker claimed it lied about the fuel economy for a few kei cars, then it claimed fuel economy tests for as far back as 1991 could reveal mile-per-gallon figures that were tampered with. In May the automaker, admitted that every single vehicle it's sold in Japan could be affected by the fuel-economy scandal. Now, the Japanese automaker revealed that more of its vehicles were involved in the fuel-economy cheating scandal – and one of them is sold in the US. After completing its investigation into the automaker's fuel-economy scandal, Japan's Transport Ministry found that Mitsubishi overstated the fuel economy for eight more vehicles in marketing brochures, one of which is sold as the Outlander Sport in the US, reports Automotive News. The Transport Ministry ordered Mitsubishi to stop domestic sales of the models, which include the Pajero, Outlander, and RVR SUV (known as the Outlander Sport in the US). The latest finding adds to four kei cars that were previously noted for having overstated fuel economy figures earlier this year. Japan's sixth-largest automaker is having a hard time recuperating since the scandal broke earlier this April. The initial scandal led to the automaker suspending its sales, which caused a large dip in the automaker's market value. The scandal required Mitsubishi to seek financial assistance from Nissan, which agreed to buy a controlling 34-percent stake for $2.2 billion. Investigators hired by Mitsubishi to look into the automaker's overstated fuel economy figures revealed the company's "corporate culture" as the issue. More specifically, the investigators founds the company's pressure to improve fuel-efficiency figures, a lack of unity between divisions, and an unwillingness to accept fuel economy shortfalls as the reason for falsifying its vehicles' mpg figures. Mitsubishi is expected to compensate Japanese owners for the overstated fuel economy figures, which would result in a massive loss for the automaker. The company is expected to post a net loss of roughly $1.4 billion this year, pushing Mitsubishi into the red for the first time in approximately eight years. Related Video: News Source: Automotive News-sub.req.Image Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg via Getty Images Government/Legal Green Mitsubishi Nissan Fuel Efficiency kei car scandal