Today Nissan announced its list of concepts that will bow at the Geneva Auto Show next month. There are two world premiers in the group, the Invitation and one other that the company is keeping closely guarded.

The Invitation, which from what we can tell is a lot like a cooler version of the Versa, will feature Nissan’s Around View Monitor (AVM) which gives a bird’s eye view of the car for easy parking.

“The future product vision promised by these four concept vehicles – when added to the strength and depth of our full range – shows the confidence coursing through every aspect of Nissan today. We are on target to become the top Asian brand right across Europe by 2016,” said Paul Wilcox, the senior vice president of sales and marketing in Europe.

Aside from the Invitation and the secret concept which has us wondering, the company will also display the Juke NISMO concept that will wear speedy-looking trim on the dressed-up Juke, but little in actual performance improvements.

The e-NV200 is Nissan’s next foray into the EV market and will first gain entry to the U.S. market as a fleet of New York City taxi cabs. The e-NV200 will be the fourth and final concept unveiled by Nissan at the Geneva show.

1,400 metric tons of diesel fuel is difficult to imagine from an average consumer perspective. That’s enough to power a diesel compact car for about 350,000 miles, much more than it would probably ever drive.

That’s also how much diesel Nissan will save every year thanks to a new transport ship which launched on its maiden voyage last Friday. The Nichioh Maru is the company’s newest freight liner and it’s making a splash in the green technology world thanks to it’s innovative design which offers an 18 percent fuel savings over similar ships without the technology.

The ship features 281 solar panels on the deck which power LED lighting throughout the ship. It also has a specially coated hull to reduce drag and is about the length of 1.5 football fields (557 feet).

The Nichioh Maru carries up to 1,380 cars and travels at a top speed of 24.4 mph or 22.1 knots to make two domestic round trips per week totaling just over 2,200 miles. Nissan released a video featuring the ship, you can watch it below.

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Coming to grips with the taxing nature EVs can have on a residential power grid is causing some car companies to explore products more akin to the housing market than the auto industry.

BMW is the latest company to announce special plans and research designed to counteract that burden by rethinking how homes use electricity. The German automaker expects to have a demo home as part of their Mountain View, Calif. technology office, completed by the end of March.

The home is designed to efficiently charge their EV, the ActiveE, which is a variation on their 1-Series while maintaining flexible power consumption to compensate for increased consumption during charging times.

Toyota introduced something similar in October, 2010 called the Toyota Smart Center, which they said would be commercially available in 2015… Do you love your Camry enough to let the same person style both your car and home? In Japan, Nissan built a demo house called Kan-kan-kyo for the same purpose.

As for BMW, they’ve paired up with Tendril, an energy management company that is helping provide data to fully examine how an EV changes household power consumption.

“We’re keen to understand how utilities will gain benefit from a program like this,” Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck said to the New York Times. “The car guys don’t want to have 3,000 relationships with all the different utilities.”

Tuck also said that even a small number of EVs charging at once could actually create demand peaks. While we’re still a long way off from having electric vehicles in every driveway, or even more than a handful per city, it could feasibly create a problem.

The auto industry is not known for sharing ideas between competitors, in fact that behavior routinely rips contracts between car companies to shreds, but keep your eye out for some serious copy cat strategy down the road.

Chevrolet is offering Volt owners a service via their OnStar system and a smartphone app that will show sources of renewable energy. That sort of power is at its peak availability during otherwise off-peak hours, encouraging Volt owners to charge off-peak.

Perhaps a similar service will be available in the future from other companies as well. For now, there are only 700 BMW ActiveEs available by lease, so it seems unlikely that they will actually market streamlined home services any time soon.

GALLERY: BMW ActiveE

[Source: New York Times]

Driving a Chevrolet Volt could get even more guilt-free in the future as the company plays with ways to coax consumers into charging with renewable energy.

GM is partnering with energy company PJM Interconnection to send data via their OnStar cloud service, called the Advanced Telematics Operating Management System (ATOMS), to Volts that need to charge. The technology would notify drivers of renewable energy as it became available relative to their location.

There is also a smartphone app in the works to alert Volt owners of available energy when they aren’t in their car, though the overall project is still in the testing phase.

Those tests are being conducted on Google’s 17-vehicle “Gfleet” based out of their Mountain View, California headquarters. While renewable energy isn’t going to fuel your car any differently than a charge originating in a coal plant, it could help drive demand for more renewable sources.

By harnessing the hordes of anti-pollution diehards, comparatively tiny as they may be, GM might make a dent in promoting green energy beyond what selling their volt already can.

“This demonstration shows that in the near future customers will have a real signal of demand for renewable energy,” said Nick Pudar, OnStar vice president of planning and business development. “As customers configure their Volts to favor renewable energy for their charging cycle, this real demand signal will influence utilities to tap into renewable sources.”

There’s also a silver lining to the plan: peak wind power hours, according to PJM, fall between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., meaning those taking advantage of a renewable charge-source would be taxing the system during off-peak hours.

GM’s continued push toward promoting the Volt is a strong demonstration of their commitment to the car, despite the controversy that hounded it last year after a few cars spontaneously combusted days after crash testing. Extended range hybrids like the Volt offer a practical solution to ultra-high milage transportation without the range anxiety we felt while road testing the Nissan Leaf.

GALLERY: 2012 Chevrolet Volt

Nissan has a reason to celebrate now that their electric vehicle, the Leaf, has achieved its milestone of 10,000 vehicles sold in the US. The Leaf, which first hit the American market in December 2010, still isn’t available in all 50 states – though Nissan looks to rectify that by March of this year.

Surely the impressive sales figure proves that American consumers are open to the idea of electric vehicles. In fact, we would go so far as to say that the worldwide market is embracing EVs as Nissan has sold 20,000 Leafs globally. The Leaf’s impressive sales figures trump all other OEMs combined sales of electric vehicles throughout the world – though that’s not saying much, considering there isn’t much competition out there as of yet.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Leaf stays strong in the sales category once the Ford Focus Electric and even the Honda Fit EV hit the marketplace.

[Source: AutoBlog Green]

Read AutoGuide’s Nissan Leaf Review here and watch our review below:

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The BMW ActiveE, or electric 1-Series, is finally available for lease, though there aren’t many up for grabs.

We originally expected this to happen last year, but BMW delayed releasing their electric car until now to streamline the delivery process. The first unit has already been delivered and there are only 700 available in total, meaning anyone interested had better move quickly. Well, sort of.

700 cars isn’t a lot, but at the same time, EVs are proving to be a tough sell with Americans. The ActiveE  closely resembles the 1-Series, but has strange circuit-esque graphics on it that make it look like a company fleet vehicle. The only other exterior difference is a bulge on the hood, which seems silly when you realize such a feature is usually reserved for performance-oriented M cars. In this case, it’s there to make space for the three lithium ion storage cells.

Speaking of performance, it’s simply off the table with this one. A disappointing nine-second 0-60 time and only 170 horsepower, 60 less than the 128i, mean the only thrills you get will be going past gas stations. That won’t even be much fun though, because the car is limited to a 90 mph top speed. At 184 ft-lbs of torque, it also has less pull than a Nissan Leaf, which has 207 ft-lbs.

The ActiveE has about the same range as it’s competition, about 100 miles, but we wish you luck in enjoying any of the classy creature comforts you’ve probably come to love in BMWs while your palms sweat with range anxiety. The ActiveE is also expensive. If you want one of the 700 in your driveway, get ready to pony up $2,250 and $499 per month on a closed 24-month lease. Unless you’re dead set on driving an electric BMW for personal reasons, this might be one to avoid. The only real upside is that the back seats are still intact, unlike the electric MiniE, which became a two seater in the name of going gasless.

GALLERY: 2012 BMW ActiveE

The Nissan Leaf just got a little greener. Nissan is exploring ways on how to reuse the electric car’s lithium-ion battery packs once it can no longer power the emissions-free car.

Partnering with ABB (a power and technology group), 4R Energy and Sumitomo Corporation of America, Nissan is looking for second-life storage applications for lithium-ion battery packs that can be used for commercial and residential purposes. The automaker is testing to see if these reclaimed battery packs can be used as back-up or energy storage systems that can store power from the grid during times of low usage. When the grid is operating at peak demand, the reclaimed batteries would feed the stored electricity back into the grid. The plan is to develop a LEAF battery storage prototype that can store at least 50 kilowatt hours (kWh) – this would be enough energy to power 30 homes for one hour.

It’s interesting to note that after a lithium-ion battery pack has powered an electric car for 10 years, it still has 70 percent capacity remaining. That means it’s viable to power something like a smart-grid community energy management system or for battery energy storage after it can no longer be used in an EV.

“It’s important to Nissan that we manage the complete lifecycle of the electric vehicle battery pack, even beyond its use in a Nissan car,” said Ken Srebnik, senior manager, NNA Corporate Planning. “Innovations in energy storage systems are becoming more viable as the electric grid gets smarter, and Nissan is proud to work with ABB, 4R Energy and Sumitomo to help bring these possibilities to market.”

5. 2012 Mazda3 Skyactiv

What’s the best car of 2012? Who knows. Is a Porsche GT3 RS 4.0 better than a Ferrari 458 Italia? What about the Scion FR-S? Or a Prius Plug-in Hybrid? The past year has seen the launch of numerous excellent vehicles, including some we really didn’t expect to be any good. That said, we’ve put together our list of the top five surprisingly good cars of 2012, starting with the updated Mazda3.

We thoroughly enjoyed the new 3 (read our 2012 Mazda3 review here), something that’s not at all surprising at first. What is more of a shock is that it was Mazda’s new Skyactiv model, designed primarily for fuel economy, and that it managed to deliver in that department while sticking true to the brand’s Zoom-Zoom slogan.

Adding to our reasons for placing this car on our list of surprisingly good cars is the technology behind it. At both a preview event and the actual drive, Mazda gave us a deep-dive into the engineering solutions behind its new SkyActiv technologies, rethinking every aspect of the engine and transmission for this updated model. When Ford sold off its shares in Mazda recently many skeptics proclaimed that in this new era a smaller company like Mazda couldn’t possibly hope to be competitive without a large partner like, say, Toyota. But Mazda has proved them wrong, not only competing, but perhaps delivering the the only 40 mpg car that’s actually fun to drive.

10. Fiat Returns to America

As another calendar year draws to a close it’s time to take a look back at the top 10 biggest stories of the year in the auto industry. It’s been a busy 12 months, starting all the way back in March when the Fiat 500 officially went on sale, marking the return of the brand to America. The last time an Italian car was sold here that didn’t cost six figures (or close to it) was 27 years ago. Since then, Fiat has introduced the 500C convertible model and most recently the Fiat 500 Abarth, aimed at enthusiasts.

The jury is still out on the Fiat brand’s success in North America, although the first year has failed to live up to expectations, with Fiat predicting sales of 50,000 units, while according to automotive data firm GoodCarBadCar only 17,444 have been sold in the first 11 months of the year (add 5,000 more if you include Canada). Some of this may be the result of Fiat’s marketing initiative with several ads featuring Jenifer Lopez, which the Fiat faithful rejected and many believe cost the brand boss Laura Souve her job. Getting the Fiat dealer network up and running also proved a challenge.

With more models coming, and Alfa Romeo set to return in 2013, Fiat is here to say. More importantly, perhaps, is the Fiat connection to Chrysler – a company it saved from bankruptcy and which it is now slowly rebuilding back into a profitable automaker.