We Obsessively Cover the Green Scene…

With 22 months of record Leaf sales under its zero-emission belt, Nissan has started two big ad campaigns for the battery-powered Leaf. On TV, there's the Kick Gas campaign (it's a popular name) and on social media, Nissan is promoting the EV as the "world's cleanest car" (it's a paint thing). We don't know how much the paint prank is costing, but we do have some estimated numbers for the TV ads.

Nissan has spent over $30 million on TV advertising for the Leaf in 2014.

According to iSpot, which tracks these sorts of things, Nissan spent over $30 million promoting the Leaf on TV in 2014. "Through November of this year," iSpot CEO Sean Muller wrote to AutoblogGreen, "Nissan spent more then $400 million in TV advertising for its traditional fuel fleet, and $22 million for the rechargeable Leaf. It has since dedicated an additional $9 million on it its new Kick Gas campaign, which started airing November 3, shortly after news of the electronic sales slump broke."

iSpot says that Kick Gas aired predominately on NBC, CBS and Fox. The result of those airings can be seen in the charts below, but the takeaway point is that viewers of college football, Gladiator and The Rachel Maddow Show were the most engaged by the ad. Nissan has said the ad is working and that it helped increase Leaf sales in November.

How is Chevrolet promoting the Volt? Not nearly as aggressively as Nissan is with the Leaf. Muller said iSpot estimates that GM spent just $2 million over the past couple of years to sell the plug-in hybrid on TV, despite offering 62 different Volt ads online. Then there's new entry into the mix, the Kia Soul EV. iSpot figures Kia has spent about $15 million on TV airings of that odd sexified hamster spot. That's a lot of money for a car that just went on sale here in October, let alone one that isn't available in most states.

We've asked Chevy, Kia and Nissan for comment on the iSpot numbers but have not yet heard back. You can watch ads for all three vehicles below.

The BMW i8 is now available as a rental from LA-based, green-car-focused MPG Car Rental. The service allows those curious about the car to give it a try without committing to buy one, or to serve as a test drive if the dealership doesn't have one available. It also allows those on a waiting list to purchase the i8 to take some of the sting out of the wait and get behind the wheel much sooner. And, of course, renting the i8 is a way to dress up your drive for a night on the town. Read more in the press release below.

Boeing has performed its first flight using "green diesel." The biofuel, made from vegetable oils and animal fat, is different from regular diesel, and is similar to HEFA aviation biofuel already in use. Boeing used a blend of 15 percent "green diesel" and 85 percent petroleum jet fuel in one of the engines of its ecoDemonstrator 787 aircraft in a test flight December 2. According to the supplier, Neste Oil, green diesel reduces carbon emissions by 50 to 90 percent over its lifecycle. Read more in the press release below.

London has approved the $274 million Garden Bridge over the Thames. The brainchild of Absolutely Fabulous actress Joanna Lumley and architect Thomas Heatherwick, the pedestrian bridge, which will be covered in lush, living greenery, is meant to be a place of calm in the bustling city. Many people have problems with it, though, including its use of public funds, its location, the way it can block views and its rules against bikes, to name just a few. See more about the Garden Bridge in the video below and read more at Treehugger.

It's almost impossible not to notice that it's a lot cheaper to fill up at the gas station in the latter portion of this year. As of December 1, the US Energy Information Administration said the average cost of a gallon of gas was $2.778, down almost 50 cents from a year ago. In general, fuel prices have been on the decline for much of 2014, and the effects have started showing themselves with people seemingly more willing to buy lower efficiency vehicles.

The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in November was 24.8 miles per gallon, according to the Wards Auto Fuel Economy Index. That was down 0.1 percent from November 2013. While a tenth of a percent was hardly a mammoth change, it still represented the first decrease in the figure in the last four years. Wards Auto said that improvements have been diminishing over the past six months, but this was the first actual decline.

That statistic also represents just one month. Through the first 11 months of the year, the index shows an average of 25.1 mpg, a 1.8 percent improvement over 2013.

Gas prices in the US have been predicted to fall since last year, in part because people were buying more fuel-efficient vehicles. However, this much of a decline was bit of a surprise. At least one expert earlier in 2014 thought it would take a financial collapse to get the average below $3.00. However, a fight in the OPEC cartel over which country would reduce production first has also been also a contributing factor in making gasoline cheaper.

The effects of the price drop are showing themselves beyond just Wards' index. Sales of hybrids and EVs are down about 5 percent for the year. That comes while SUVs and pickups are up around 20 percent.

The lads at Top Gear have released their listing of the finest cars of the past year, handing the ultimate honor to BMW's revolutionary i8 plug-in-hybrid supercar.

"The i8 is a milestone in the annals of automotive history and a glorious statement for an exciting and positive future. The i8 delivers - and then some," the British mag wrote. The i8, though, was far from the only hybridized car to take victories. James May and Richard Hammond both highlighted hybrids as their personal cars of the year, with May saluting the Ferrari LaFerrari and the Hamster, unsurprisingly, heaping praise on the Porsche 918 Spyder. Jeremy Clarkson, meanwhile, opted to shock many by selecting not only an American car as his best of 2014, but giving the honor to of all things, a Corvette.

Clarkson wasn't the only person to honor the USA's iconic sports car, with the new, 650-horsepower Z06 variant being named TG's Muscle Car of the Year. Other big winners include Mercedes-Benz, which TG honored for S-Class Coupe (Luxury Car of the Year), the new AMG GT (Sports Car of the Year) and the not-for-US C-Class Estate (Family Car of the Year). The 458 Italia Speciale A snagged a second win for Ferrari.

The best of the rest include the Citroen C4 Cactus, Renault Twingo, Volkswagen Golf R, Lamborghini Huracan and Audi TT.

Take a look below for the celebratory press blast from BMW.

Think that owning and driving a plug-in vehicle in green-centric San Francisco is easy? You should probably think again. That's because a lot of other residents already have the same idea, and there aren't enough charging stations to keep up. A classic First World problem, for sure, but a problem nevertheless for at least one EV driver.

A Wired reporter shares the experience test-driving a Nissan Leaf for a couple of days. The catch is that, like many of the city's residents, he's an apartment-dweller without a dedicated parking spot, meaning that he's at the mercy of publicly-accessible station availability. And that infrastructure, he writes, is "woefully inadequate" to handle the current crop of plug-in vehicle drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area

The crux is that, while Nissan Leaf's navigation systems can direct a driver to the nearest stations, they neither say if the stations are occupied or if they're open to the public. The former issue is a major one because, unlike gas stations, a plug-in vehicle charging station can be occupied for hours instead of minutes. That means plug-in vehicle drivers without overnight charging access will likely constantly be on the hunt for unoccupied charging stations in the area until more stations are deployed. Read the details of Alex Davies' trying times here.

Three hundred miles down, 2,100 to go. Green-car advocates can soon travel a bit of American history thanks to a public-private collaboration that is stringing together some plug-in vehicle charging stations along the Illinois stretch of historic Route 66. Heck, maybe there will be some wind-powered electricity from Chicago.

The group includes automakers as well as the state of Illinois and UC Davis and is setting aside about $1 million for the project. All told, about eight cities along the 300-mile stretch between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River will get charging facilities, with at least one fast-charging station in each of the cities, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says. The goal is to finish that stretch of plug-in stations by next summer, at which point Illinois-based plug-in drivers can "get their kicks" with relative impunity.

Historic Route 66 was officially decertified in 1985 as the US interstate system usurped much of its usefulness. The route spanned about 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, CA. Interestingly enough, the world's first International Electric Vehicle Museum opened along an Arizona stretch of Route 66 earlier this year. Take a look at the "Electric Highway Route 66 for a new generation" Facebook page (yes, there is one) here.

Forget Dueling Banjos. Audi is proposing "Dueling Motors" for its Audi A7 Sportback H-Tron Quattro concept vehicle. All in the name of appropriate pickup, of course.

The German automaker, which showed off the concept sedan at the Los Angeles Auto Show last month, is pairing a plug-in electric motor with a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain. Each motor powers two wheels, maintaining the Quattro's all-wheel-drive pedigree. The car's 8.8-kWh lithium-ion battery can drive the car as far as 31 miles on battery-power alone. After that, the water-vapor-spewing fuel-cell engine kicks in.

Audi executive Ulrich Hackenberg told Automotive News Europe that the unusual set-up is necessary because the hydrogen fuel cell powertrain alone would only power two wheels while providing an insufficient 136 horsepower. Not exactly sport-sedan material, especially for a car that weighs about 4,300 pounds, even if it is a zero-emission ride.

Combined, the two engines give the sedan 231 horsepower as well as a combined single-charge/full-tank range of almost 350 miles. What it all means is that the A7 can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than eight seconds and has a top speed of about 112 miles per hour, and can still dash through the snow.

If you're going to drop $15 grand or so boosting your Tesla Model S's output to 691 horsepower (as if the all-electric sedan doesn't have enough guts as it is), what's another $6,000 to blow on a really cool spoiler kit. Because you do want to keep that car as low to the ground as possible, right?

Hong Kong aftermarket specialist Revozport, which has worked with McLaren, Lamborghini and Nissan on various aftermarket kits, is offering drivers of the Model S its so-called R-Zentric product line to sport things up further with touches such as side skirts, front splitters and trunk-lip spoilers. Prices start at $765 for the trunk spoiler and work their way up to $5,690 for the "complete aerokit." Then, there's the option of blowing $11,000 for Klassen 22-inch forged wheels. Sporty. Take a closer look at the Tesla options here and see an animated video (no shots of the car in action, sadly) below.

We last reported on Revozport in 2012 with its Mini Targa Raze, which, depending on the option, tuned up the little droptop's motor by 69 horsepower to 250 horsepower while pulling 66 pounds off the little car thanks to kevlar and carbon parts. The company has also worked on customization kits for the Volkswagen Golf GTI.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that releasing monthly sales numbers allows the media, "to read all sorts of nonsense into the deliveries." He said that with the company's irregular delivery schedule – 1,000 in a country one month, only a handful the next – the spikes and valleys would not give an accurate picture of the company's actual orders or demand. But, when there's no transparency, people will go looking for answers – or nonsense.

Daily Kanban found only 17,819 Model S EVs were registered between January and September 2014.

Case in point: Tesla Model S sales, which everyone wants to know about but no one is quite sure about. The best we can do is the quarterly delivery numbers that Tesla does release. For 2014, the official numbers released so far add up to 21,821 (1Q: 6,457, 2Q: 7,579, 3Q: 7,785). That's for the first three quarters, or from January through the end of September, and represents global deliveries. But Daily Kanban obtained global data for all sorts of electric cars from JATO and discovered that there were only 17,819 Model S EVs registered around the world between January and September 2014, a difference of 4,002. Previously, Daily Kanban quoted John Lovallo, a research analyst at Merrill Lynch, saying that Tesla might have around 3,000 Model S EVs, "in inventory or in transit," and is curious to know what's going on.

While this next comparison isn't perfect because the dates don't match up, we can take a look at sales of the Nissan Leaf to see how the official and JATO numbers compare. Nissan said in the middle of January 2014 that it sold a cumulative 100,000 Leafs and then announced towards the end of November that it had sold 150,000 total. JATO's numbers show that Nissan sold 44,897, globally, between January and September.

We certainly don't know if the different between JATO's number and the official Tesla figures represent a delay in how fast people register their cars or if something else is going on. We have asked Tesla for a comment and for more detailed sales numbers, but have not gotten a response. We do know that, while not ideal, monthly sales data can sometimes be quite helpful in figuring out what's going on in the industry.

Electric vehicle racing fans in South America will have a chance to catch Formula E action live on television. Channel 4 Uruguay will air the Punta del Este ePrix on December 13, 2014. Also, Formula E has signed with America TV in Argentina, which will allow fans access to Buenos Aires ePrix live on January 10, 2015. Both stations are public free-to-air TV. "America TV is proud to announce its strategic partnership with Formula E," says Executive Producer Luciano Andres Foppoli, adding, "We share the same entertainment values and support the development of the latest electrical technologies." Read more at the Formula E website.

The COBI connected biking system is seeking crowdfunding support through Kickstarter. The system mounts your smartphone front and center on your handlebars to act as a display, with a thumb controller close to the grip. COBI includes more classic features such as an automatic headlight, brake light, rear turn signal and a custom bell along with connectivity that can give directions, track your route, provide weather forecasts, record heart rate and calories burned, act as a theft alarm and, of course, charge your phone. Backers can get the basic COBI package starting at $115. Check it out in the video below, and learn more at COBI's Kickstarter campaign page.

China has surpassed the US in monthly EV sales. In September, Chinese customers bought 11,991 plug-in vehicles, compared to 10,551 in the US. It should be noted, though, that many of those purchased in China are what we would consider low-speed neighborhood electric vehicles. It seems that China's efforts to encourage EV adoption in order to mitigate urban pollution are starting to see results. Read more at Want China Times or Green Car Reports.

Santa has one less excuse not to bring a shiny new electric toy from Zero Motorcycles down your chimney this Christmas. The elven bike-building wizards at the company's Scotts Valley headquarters have been working extra hard these past few months, and are now assembling the brilliant 2015 models in their freshly retooled, reconfigured workshop.

The company expects demand to increase and so have hired on more help, as well as improved their manufacturing processes, to deal with the anticipated workload. A call to Hollywood Electrics, its top US dealership, confirms that this year's pre-orders are up and, indeed, that it recently announced a deal with the Burbank Police Department to supply that agency with some new patrol models from Zero. Of course, the company has an international reach and it also just struck a distribution deal that would see its bikes sold in the massive Indonesian market.

If you've been naughty, or just need to wait for warmer weather before pulling the trigger, you can get a temporary Zero Motorcycle fix by scrolling below to watch the outfits recent promotional video, featuring shots from the factory, enthusiastic testimonials by existing owners and lots of footage of these electric machines in action. If you can sit still after that, you can also peruse an official press release marking the occasion.

One US Department of Energy plug-in vehicle charging-station program is geared to turn this country into ... Norway? Not literally, but the DOE's EV Everywhere Workplace Charging Challenge was launched early last year to get more companies to install on-site charging stations in order to increase plug-in vehicle adoption. And while the uptake hasn't exactly caught up the rate of citizens in that notoriously EV-friendly Scandinavian country, the results are pretty impressive.

In short, the number of company "partners" participating in the program has surged from 13 that signed up in January 2013 to about 150 today. Those companies oversee 300 sites that serve more than 600,000 employees. So far, those companies' workers are shown to be 20 times more likely to drive an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid than the general public. In fact, one in 73 employees working for the participating companies drives a plug-in vehicle, compared to the national average of about one in 1,400 people.

All told, the program currently is on pace to cut annual fuel use by 800,000 gallons, or the equivalent of the fuel used by about 1,500 cars. The program is slated to run through 2018, so there's plenty of time to grow that number further. Check out the DOE's press release below.

Not too long after Tesla stepped in to scoop up some of the engineers left behind as Ford, GM and Toyota announced shuttering production Down Under, the California-based EV company will start selling its Model S in Australia. Beginning Tuesday, December 9, sales will begin in Sydney, bringing a California-style plug-in change to the country's automotive landscape.

The Model S will start at $81,729 US in Australia.

Come Tuesday, we can expect to hear what Tesla's plans are in regard to distribution, creating charging networks and the like. So far, we know that its Supercharger network will likely be powered at least in part by solar energy and that the first Model S deliveries will go to solar-powered homes. This isn't surprising, considering the company's ties to SolarCity, for whom Tesla will set aside a certain amount of battery production in its Reno-based Gigafactory. If Tesla's solar strategy is successful, it could open up conversations about larger-scale reliance on renewable energy in Australia. We'll have to wait and see.

The Model S will start at $97,245 ($81,729 US) in Australia, and that includes taxes and registration fees, but customers outside of the Australian Capital Territory could see their base prices start at over $103,000. Tesla believes, though, that its prices will be competitive with the other big players in Australia's luxury segment.

Right now, there are still a lot of questions to be answered regarding Tesla's future in Australia. Some of those answers should arrive next week, while we'll just have to wait for the market to respond for others. If you'd like to be part of that market, head on over to Tesla's Australia page.

The lighter, aluminum-bodied 2015 Ford F-150 gets (at best) 26 miles per gallon. That's not bad for a truck that size – and we should always remember that improving gas guzzlers can make a big difference – but what if the popular truck came with a gas-electric hybrid powertrain? How efficient would that be? We heard Ford talking about such a vehicle last year, and now we learn that Ford is still "working very hard" to make a F-150 hybrid happen.

You want details? Well, we all want details, but those will not be coming for quite some time. Last year, Ford's global product development chief, Raj Nair, said that the company was planning to have hybrid pickups and hybrid SUVs on sale by 2020. With fuel prices dropping, Nair is now saying that a hybrid F-150 makes more sense, financially, than a diesel, but Ford could make both options available, depending on customer demand. The diesel wouldn't require all that much work, Nair said, since "we've got diesels in the portfolio."

To date, the only hybrid F-150s we've seen have been conversions, often PHEVs, like this example from HVET or this one from Quantum. Pickup trucks from other manufacturers haven't been greeted with huge sales numbers. General Motors stopped making its big two-mode hybrids and cancelled the next-gen program.