This year at the LA Auto Show, Nissan unveiled a new vehicle, the Cube. While the Cube has been kicking around in Japan for quite a few years, it had good company. There are tons of similarly shaped compact and subcompact cars that don’t make the Cube seem quite so out of place. In North America that’s a slightly different story. Sure, there’s the Scion xB, but that’s just one car, hardly a class or a design trend in and of itself.

The Cube will go on sale in the spring and will come with the same 122-hp engine that currently comes in the Nissan Versa and will be available with either a 6-speed manual transmission or a CVT that should put the lovable box slightly above 30 mpg. Nissan hopes to make this car a new model for utility and convenience, but without the waste that goes along with driving your truck to the store to tow the groceries home.

But the real question is, will it work? Nissan wants to appeal to a large cross-section of the North American consumer with this car, and looking at the success the xB has had, I think that’s definitely possible. However, it’s also possible that the xB has simply filled a niche that is now saturated, and that at best the Cube will be fighting within that niche for a limited market share instead of stealing buyers away from bigger, more expensive crossovers.

I sure don’t have the answer, but what do you think? Even though I may not think the car is ugly, the average consumer might. Will this car be another flop, a case of the Japanese market not translating to the North American market? Time will tell, but until then, feel free to speculate in the comments.

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Here on EcoModder we have talked about the EcoDrivingUSA program and some of Pro Formance’s results with Ford before, but I finally got a chance to go through Pro Formance’s ecodriving program. There was a lot of preaching to the choir, but I was interested to see how they approached teaching ecodriving to the average person, and not just the average person who is already interested in improving fuel economy.

The Car

Because I was second in line for the round of test drives I was in, I had to settle for the Audi A3 TDI station wagon. I don’t want to sound like I’m down on the car, since it was a very nice ride, but for several reasons I really wanted to drive the Mini Cooper (I’d never driven one, it had a stick shift, etc). Because of my disappointment I made it my goal to surpass the Mini Cooper in fuel economy in the test.

The A3 TDI is a very luxurious car, but it’s definitely not the biggest fuel sipper around. The diesel engine helps a lot, but the automatic transmission and general size of the car makes it a difficult choice for high mileage (though that doesn’t mean you can improve it).

The Drive

We went out for a drive through some very congested LA streets, which were not good at all for fuel economy. Though the test drive was only a couple of miles in each direction, my instructor had time to go through many of the standard techniques like smooth acceleration, the importance of anticipating future events, and also the importance of keeping your car well maintained.

In keeping with these tips, and not wanting to annoy my instructor, I toned down my own ecodriving and tried to do my best simply by anticipating stops and avoiding mashing the gas pedal at any cost. Doing this I managed to eke out 39 mpg from the station wagon, slightly edging out the Mini Cooper, which only pulled in 38.4 mpg.

Surely, I could have done better using neutral and having a fuel economy gauge, but I wanted to see what mileage would be like for a more typical driver in a car like the A3 TDI just using the Pro Formance tips, and I was very happy to see that near 40 mpg numbers could be returned, even in heavy traffic.

Post-Ride

After the ride I got a chance to talk shop with some of the Pro Formance guys and learned that many of them practice more involved ecodriving techniques and are interesting in some of the ecomods that are fairly common. I was really impressed with their work and their mission, and hope that they can expand their operation to get in touch with more drivers.

Also, I learned that from their study on ecodriving with Ford, they realized a few things about the way different groups of people drive. For example, men and younger people tended to show a greater improvement with ecodriving, primarily because they were more aggressive in their driving techniques before taking the Pro Formance class. At the same time, everyone in the study still managed to improve their mileage, even the old ladies!

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Well, calling it ecodriving is pushing the limit a little bit, but I did get to take the fortwo out for a serious spin around the block. I test drove the U.S. version of the car, and not any of the cooler, European options, so that certainly needs to be taken into account. On that note, I was very happy with my drive, aside from a few caveats.

Despite the fortwo’s reputation as a cheap ride, it felt very solid and well constructed. The seats were comfortable and the cabin well designed, with the open top a welcome way to avoid the claustrophobia you might feel in a vehicle with such little overall interior volume. The gauge cluster was well laid out, and the analog clock on the dash added a nice touch, though it might make reading the clock more time intensive than safe when on the road.

As far as the actual drive is concerned, the car felt very solid and had plenty of pep. Compared to the i MiEV electric car, it wasn’t as fast, but it till avoided the age old “too slow to get out of it’s own way” stereotype that still plagues the subcompact section of cars. I was actually following the i MiEV during my test drive and found myself easily able to keep up with its lead-footed driver in most circumstances.

However, that brings me to my two main criticisms of the car. The first is that the transmission available in the United States is very unsatisfying. The shifting is much rougher than it needs to be, and makes the overall experience of the car seem rather unrefined, especially for a product from Mercedes. I am under the impression that this isn’t the case with many of the European models, but that doesn’t erase the fact that U.S. options still have major flaws.

The second complaint from me is that Smart really needs to add some sort of fuel economy gauge to the car. Sure, this may be a little expensive, but I think most drivers would welcome the information, especially since many of them are certainly buying the vehicle for its impressive fuel economy. I hope smart will jump on the bandwagon with this in the next few years.

That said, I can’t tell you what fuel economy I delivered with the car, but if you live in the city and are looking for something small and fuel efficient, the fortwo is a worthy choice.

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While I was at the LA Auto Show, I wrote a lot of things for a friend of mine who runs EcoGeek, but I haven’t had much time yet to do the same with EcoModder. That will be rectified in the coming days, but until then I thought some of you might be interested to see what I had written thus far:

• The LA Auto Show’s 5 Most Exciting Green Cars: My own personal roundup of what I thought was exciting at the show.
• Honda Debuts Eco-Assist Gauge Cluster (and more!): Definitely a great idea from Honda.
• Faurecia Interiors Help Cars Use Less Gas: A look at one of the more interesting ways in which the industry is trying to save fuel.
• Mitsubishi i MiEV Test Drive: Hard to say much more than “I loved it”
• Nissan Stresses the Future of EVs: It was a grim sort of auto show, but there’s some hope for those who make it to the long term.
• MINI E World Premiere: A great car that I’m very excited about seeing on the roads soon.
• Jetta TDI is Green Car of the Year: Clean diesel takes the gold this year at the LA Auto Show.
• LA Auto Show Press Kit Awards: A fun little thing I wrote comparing the waste in the press materials.
• The Green Promise of the LA Auto Show: Was this promise delivered on? It’s hard to say.

As I said, there’s more in the pipeline, but feel free to read and comment away,

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of driving Mitsubishi’s new i MiEV electric car, based on a Japanese kei car. The car, while not in its final stages of production yet are currently being field tested around the world for a rollout in Japan in 2009. Next summer Mitsubishi plans to sell 2,000 units of the car at 4 million yen (~$41,000), with production to increase sharply in 2010 and 2011.

Right now the cars are pretty much hand-built. The chassis, of course, is common for Mitsubishi, but the electric drive train and the batteries especially are still handbuilt. As I was told by the Mitsubishi representative that rode shotgun, the costs of production will go down significantly when Mitsubishi’s battery production company gets up to full steam and becomes automated.

i MiEV Test Drive

I’ve been in quite a few small, fuel efficient cars in my time (including other Japanese Kei cars), and I can honestly say this is faster than any of those. In fact, I drove a smart fortwo immediately afterwards and was shocked at the difference in pulling power. Even though the i MiEV is a small electric car, one of the characteristics of electric cars is that they deliver full torque all the way from 0 rpm.

Of course, Mitsubishi has designed the car not to do exactly that to prevent accidental burn outs, but they didn’t cripple the car’s acceleration at all. Even in ECO mode, a range extending mode that tunes down the performance of the car a small amount, the i MiEV was faster than the gasoline-powered fortwo. Besides the normal and ECO modes, there was also a regenerative braking mode that could be easily accessed to provide greater recharge when your foot was off the pedal.

Taking the car around turns was also a pleasure. Mitsubishi obviously beefed up the suspension to hold the extra weight, and because the batteries were towards the bottom of the car the center of gravity is significantly lowered compared to its gasoline-powered cousin. And all of this came without any noticeable compromise to the interior space.

Overall, the test drive was great. The car can go between 80-100 miles on a 2-4 hour charge (depending on what kind of plug you use) and the only problem was that I kept turning on the wipers when I meant to signal.

Will you be buying one when it comes to your market?

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