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S BE
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back story
Gone in
22 Hours
Arriving on a snowy
winter’s day in gray
Vancouver, IEEE Spectrum
journalism intern Anne-Marie
Corley was nonetheless full of
anticipation. She had jetted across
the continent to be among the first
journalists to drive Nissan’s highly
anticipated pure-electric car, the
Leaf. She was on assignment for
our “Top 10 Tech Cars” (in this
issue), and she’d be in Vancouver
for a grand total of 22 hours.
Then she got a look at the car.
It wasn’t the sleek e-speedster
that will go on sale later this year
in Japan, the United States, and
Europe, but rather a “test mule,”
with the guts of a Leaf and the
body of a dowdy Versa. But that
didn’t take away from the fun
of driving it. A Nissan observer
riding shotgun didn’t flinch as
Corley stomped on the gas (whoops,
electricity!) and slammed on the
brakes while zipping around the
test course. But when he saw her
4 NA • IEEE SPECTRUM • APRIL 2010
sneaking back to the track to try
for a fourth spin, he greeted her
with a shake of the head and said,
“Oh, you again?”
Having piloted a Toyota Prius
across the southwestern United
States and sped a pint-size Daimler
Smart car down the German
autobahn, Corley had felt the
difference between those cars and
regular sedans. So it surprised her
that the Leaf “felt just like driving
a normal car.”
Unfortunately, because the
car wasn’t complete on the inside,
she didn’t get to try out the spaceage
controller that replaces the
gearshift. And although she got to
drive the car into the garage for its
lunch break (sandwiches for press,
electrons for the Leaf), no amount
of finagling kept Nissan engineers
from shooing her away before they
plugged in the EV. “It’s not the real
one anyway,” they told her. So she’ll
have to wait with the rest of us to
take a peek at its charging hardware.
She did manage to squeeze in
a few more test runs before being
left behind by the press van. Then
she got out of town just in time
for her flight—and just before the
snow hit. �
CITING ARTICLES IN IEEE SPECTRUM
IEEE Spectrum publishes two editions. In the international edition, the abbreviation INT appears at the
foot of each page. The North American edition is identified with the letters NA. Both have the same
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should include the issue designation. For example, the first Update page is in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 47,
no. 4 (INT), April 2010, p. 9, or in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 47, no. 4 (NA), April 2010, p. 11.
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IEEE SPECTRUM JOURNALISM INTERN Anne-Marie Corley,
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S BE
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aG
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COURTESY OF ANNE-MARIE CORLEY
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