Volkswagen said it is still seeking the cause of a weekend power outage at its Wolfsburg plant in Germany and said production had been cut by several hundred vehicles, more than it initially estimated.
The outage affecting generators at Wolfsburg occurred early on Saturday and lasted for several hours, also affecting adjacent parts of the northern German city, where Europe’s largest automotive group is headquartered.
Taxi Electric, based in Amsterdam, will be the first private taxi company to add the new battery-electric Nissan e-NV200 taxi to its fleet. Taxi Electric operates a fleet of 25 Nissan LEAF vehicles and was the first private taxi service to switch to a fleet of 100% electric taxis in November 2011.
The e-NV200’s electric drivetrain, based on that used in the LEAF, is combined with the cargo volume of the NV200 to create a practical and versatile vehicle capable of carrying people or goods.
For the past few years, General Motors executives have fought a valiant battle in Europe on Opel’s behalf: insisting that the brand was a premium marque above mainstream Chevrolet, while fending off persistent rumors of Opel’s sale or demise.
That battle is over. Opel is back to being GM’s mainstream brand in Europe with the decision late last year to remove Chevrolet from the market, and Opel has the full backing of GM’s new leadership. Now comes the hard part: revitalizing a faded brand that had lost market share for 14 straight years, before a slight uptick last year.
The father of the original Toyota Prius has high expectations for the segment he helped create. “I foresee hybrid models pretty soon reaching 20 percent of global sales from about 13 percent to 14 percent now,” Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada stated in an interview.
