On November 14, 15 and 16, locals will have the opportunity to check out Nissan’s first ever zero-emissions electric car, the LEAF. This will be the first public unveiling of the LEAF in North America. You can check it out this weekend at the following locations:

November 14, 2009 10am – 9pm
Third Street Promenade
1351 3rd Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA

November 15, 2009 11am – 8pm
Americana at Brand
233 S. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA

November 16, 2009 9am – 5pm
University Southern California
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA

According to Nissan, the LEAF handles and accelerates like a V6 and has a top speed of up to 90mph. It will have an average range of 100 miles per charge and the battery will charge in 4-8 hours on a 220V home charging unit. At quick-charge stations, it will charge to 80% in about 26 minutes. Although Nissan has not released exact information on pricing, they say that they are “targeting a price in the range of other typical family sedans.” The LEAF will be on the road in some states in 2010, with mass-production beginning in 2012.

To attend one of the unveiling events this weekend, register on their website here.

Matt Schrader spent a few months talking to people about the street cleaning policy in LA – both the people who are in charge of it and the people effected by it. Turns out you are much more likely to get a ticket then you are to actually have your street swept.

If you get a ticket for parking in a no-parking-because-of-street-sweeping zone, and they don’t ever bother to sweet the street, should that ticket be void?

A crystal clear case of driver vs biker road rage?  Last year, city prosecutors filed criminal charges against physician Christopher Thompson for deliberately braking hard in front of two cyclists on a narrow stretch of Mandeville Canyon.  After a three-week trial, the jurors came back with convictions in hand: Dr. Thompson was found guilty of, among other charges, assault with a deadly weapon and mayhem.  According to the prosecutors:

… Thompson stopped his car after passing the two cyclists and shouting at them to ride single-file. One cyclist ran face-first into the rear windshield of the doctor’s red Infiniti, breaking his front teeth and nose, and leaving his face scarred. The other was sent hurtling to the sidewalk and suffered a separated shoulder.

Thompson told the response officer that the cyclists flipped him off, so he hit the brakes “to teach them a lesson.”  Thompson’s version is decidedly more benign: he says he pulled over to take a photo of the riders and thought he had left them enough room to get around his car.  Which one sounds more likely?

Two lessons spring to mind.  First, statements you make after an accident can be used for and against you in court, so talk to anyone at your emotionally-charged peril.  And second, don’t effing use your car as a weapon to “teach” someone a lesson.  No apples for you.

Photo courtesy frequent commentator waltarrrrr via the Metblogs Flickr pool.

It’s Wizard-of-Oz windy out there. Debris is flying through the air, and traffic lights are out all over town. Take that stretch of Corbin near my office in Chatsworth, for instance: no working traffic lights there. No sirree. What does LAFD tell us? What you already know, I’m sure:

With the possibility of downed power lines causing local power outages, drivers should use extreme caution when approaching darkened traffic signals. Whether driving on a main thoroughfare or a side street, motorists should treat all non-functioning traffic signals as a four way stop.

Pretty simple right? Sadly no. What would be a minor inconvenience in most cities is a mini-death-race-2000 in the Valley. If only anyone here knew how to treat a four-way stop, but they don’t. There are two possible approaches in the San Fernando Valley: 1.Muscle your way through with speed and aggression, or 2.Sit timidly at the light for far too long until the people behind you honk at you.

Seriously, at all five of the intersections with blackened traffic signals that I passed through tonight, anarchy reigned. The nearest thing I could figure is that Valley drivers only know how to deal with a traffic signal that is out when there is a white-gloved cop to wave cars through. Barring that, they just pretend there is a cop there and somewhat randomly drive through in spurts under the safety-in-numbers theory of traffic. So, in the interests of my own personal well being as well as the safety of all of my fellow Angelenos, I offer you the rules of the road. Please read if you are uncertain. This has been a public service announcement.

Oh, man.  I had all these plans to leave the Westside to meet a few folks and try out CorkBar’s Test Kitchen Tuesdays special (tonight’s $2 test kitchen plate: braised oxtail with parsley risotto) and then I came across this.  The LA Times helpfully warns us that the convergence of normal rush hour traffic, the Lakers’ season opener at Staples Center, and the premiere of the Michael Jackson movie This Is It at LA Live likely will result in a nightmare for anyone headed in the general vicinity of downtown tonight.  Shucks.  To CorkBar, I’ll have to say what I’ve been saying to people more and more often lately: maybe next week.  Maybe.

As the holiday season approaches and your calendar begins to overflow with festive party invites, we at Metblogs urge you to act responsibly, especially when it comes to alcohol consumption.

Our motto is: If you’re going to be making a merry mess of yourself all over town, please do us all a favor and go home with a stranger.

OK, maybe that’s not an official Metblogs motto, but it should be. The thing is, there are many alternatives to drinking and driving. You can take the Metro, call a taxi, hire a limo, appoint a designated driver, call a sober friend, call Alcoholics Anonymous. Still, with all of these options, so many of us will choose to get behind the wheel of our own car and drive home after a night of boozing. I am not proud to admit how many times I have done this in the past.

According to Y Drive, “The main reason people drink and drive is that they don’t want to leave their cars behind.”

That’s why Y Drive came up with an innovative and affordable service that eliminates this factor altogether. When you call Y Drive, a professional driver will come to you on a folding scooter. For a flat fee of $38, the (more…)

Oh we love our fast cars here in LA.  This near pristine Cobra 427 was spotted at Kaiser Pasadena during the lunch hour today.  Nice to see the old car being used, and on the streets no less instead of restricted to the odd track event or horrors…trailered to car shows.

The Cobra 427 was Carrol Shelby’s effort to get an A/C Cobra homologated for racing and have something that could beat the Corvette of the era. (Homologation is the process of producing enough cars for road use so they can be used as a “stock” road car for track use).   Though he missed getting homologation completed in time for the 1965 racing season, it was eventually was and became a terror of the race tracks even into the 1970’s by private racing teams.

A couple of more pics after the jump. (more…)

TMZ, I love you.  I never thought I’d say that.  But that was my reaction after being pointed by the Los Angeles Times Local section online to these photos at TMZ.com purportedly catching First Lady Maria Shriver Schwarzenegger in the act.  No, not an adulterous sex romp, but rather, two cell phone-in-hand chatting sessions while driving, at least one of which reportedly takes place in Los Angeles.  Yeah, it was her husband Arnold who signed  the law that Maria clearly appears to be breaking.

I can’t wait for Maria’s top five excuses:

5.  I was stopped at a red light.
4.  I was stopped in traffic.
3.  The pics are Photoshop phonies.
2.  It wasn’t me, it was Mariel Hemingway (top photo).
1.  It wasn’t me, it was Amy Irving (bottom photo).

This once, I hope a TMZ celebrity story makes front page news and stays there.  Maybe it will save some lives.

I love these cheeky little trucks tossing barbs at the competition.  But I think Fresh and Easy would get more mileage (no pun) on the fact that their little trucks run on an eco-friendly bio-diesel if that was more prominent than the barbs.  Pic by me with the trusty cell phone cam, it does get bigger with a click.

I’m a car guy. I like to go for fun drives. Every once in a while things converge and I get to go out and have some fun.   Wednesday was such a day; I had the use of a 2011 Ford Fiesta prototype for a few hours and took it for a run up and down Monrovia Canyon.

The car: This is a prototype Ford Fiesta, a European spec production model that will vary a little from what we get in our final production form when it goes on sale next year as a 2011 model. What we will see different is changes to the bumpers to meet our more stringent standards, and a slightly more powerful, refined 4cyl compared to what the European versions get. The car’s driving characteristics won’t be changed in the process, that’s a good thing.

Driving impression: Well, I am not at a loss for words. Much cleaner handling than the Toyota Yaris and not as tipsy feeling as the tall Honda Fit. (I have been in both recently). Overall it had very crisp reactions to steering input in the tight corners in Monrovia Canyon. The suspension was controlled soaking up ruts and potholes without bottoming out or “floating” about as what was the norm not that long ago with US produced small cars. Believe the best pop culture phrase to be used to describe the overall driving impression is: “Win”. (more…)