What's Wrong With This Picture: You Think This Is A Game? Edition
Nissan has partnered with the telemetry firm Carwings for years, but with the electric-drive Nissan Leaf, what was once a way to suggest efficient navigation routes and driving techniques has become a game. Yes, Carwings allows you to track every trip in your Leaf down to the last nauseating detail and helps prevent the creep of “range anxiety,” but it also ranks you against all other Leaf drivers in your region. In short, the Leaf isn’t just a car, it’s a competition for the “Platinum” Leaf Cup. The fanboys at MyNissanLeaf.com are all abuzz over the competitive feature, which Nissan hasn’t done much to publicize otherwise. But do the early adopters who buy Leafs need a competition to encourage efficient driving, or is this just going to turn the Leaf into a posterboy for antisocial hypermiling? Sometimes getting where you need to go on time is competition enough.
Still, based on the forum chatter, telemetry data is hugely popular among alt-fuel adherents and hypermilers alike. Carwings-style telemetry reporting will definitely be a significant trend in future automobiles… even if the Leaf’s competition aspect gets left by the roadside.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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This is akin to the hypermiler bragging rights/nerd prize in the hybrid community over the last few years. (If anyone's counting, 62mpg/750 miles out of a single ~12 gallon tank in an '06 Civic Hybrid I used to own... my area is full of hicks driving full size pickup trucks at or under the posted speed limit and drafting is an easy way to boost your gas mileage...)
I would finish last on a daily basis. I hope these come with a front mount trailer hitch or built in pull strap.