You’d be forgiven for thinking that a visit to the great outdoors – the vast Great Smoky Mountain National Park, straddling the border between Tennessee and North Carolina in America, for example – would be the perfect place for plenty of fresh air.

Not so, it seems. According to a survey carried out in 2004, it was considered the most polluted national park in the country with, it was estimated, no fewer than 150 ‘unhealthy air days’ in the previous year.

It’s not just the ten million annual visitors who were at risk but also the park’s natural plants and its local inhabitants, including one of the largest populations of black bears in the United States.

On Wednesday, November 21, actress Diane Kruger, arrived in an electric Renault ZOE to switch on the Christmas lights that will illuminate the world’s most beautiful avenue until January 9, 2013.

Diane Kruger is a German actress, most known for her roles in Troy, Joyeux Noël and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. She was a member of the jury at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Click here to see her profile on imdb.com.

Renault has been official partner of the Champs-Elysées Christmas lights since 2012.

Nissan unveiled an updated version of its LEAF electric vehicle in Tokyo, with enhanced features as well as more Japanese sales outlets with quick chargers for the world’s No. 1 EV.

The Nissan LEAF has sold over 43,000 units worldwide. The new Japan version will be available in three trims, now with a range of 228 km.*

Vehicle owners in New York and New Jersey have been struggling to find gasoline since super storm Sandy hit the East Coast.  But people with fully electric vehicles like the Nissan LEAF are having an easier time charging up and getting to where they need to go.

After Sandy, millions in New York and New Jersey were affected.  Offices, homes and subways flooded. Trees tore through structures, and even now with much of the electrical power restored and debris removed, it is not easy to get gas.  Long lines at filling stations are forming all across the area.  Even at two in the morning, vehicles are backed up for miles.

Coca-Cola in Japan has signed up to become the latest corporation to test the Nissan’s 100% electric van for commercial use ahead of its market launch at the end of fiscal year 2013.  

Vast ‘fields’ of solar panels have been installed at six Renault production plants across France to help reduce the company’s CO2 emissions, lower its electricity bill… and protect new vehicles.

The panels – more correctly known as photovoltaic installations – cover a combined area of 400,000 square metres. If that’s hard to picture, consider it this way: it’s the equivalent of 60 soccer pitches.

They have been installed at Renault’s plants in Douai, Maubeuge, Flins, Batilly, Sandouville and Cléon and together are capable of producing 52,600 MWh of electricity a year. That’s enough to power a town of 15,000 people.

Each year on the first Sunday of November, the road from London to Brighton on the England’s South Coast becomes a moving museum as it fills up with more than 500 pioneering veteran cars. The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run has taken place almost every year from 1927 and is the longest running motoring event in the world.

But it’s now been joined by a second event over the same weekend, this one looking to cars of the future rather than the past.

It’s probably the smallest – and perhaps the most unlikely – fire fighting machine in the world, but its size will help the tiny Renault Twizy to save lives.

Resplendent in red and white, and with a blue light perched on its roof, the all-electric Twizy has joined the Paris fire brigade for front line duty. Thanks to its ability to squeeze through gaps and go places where a conventional fire truck cannot go it offers early intervention at an incident, providing life saving support before the big guns arrive.

A sustainable test home with a Nissan LEAF to match!

Samantha and Fabrice Pastour and their two boys are living their green dream. As test tenants of Velux’s Maison Air & Lumière 2020 sustainable home project, they are also testing project partner Nissan’s LEAF in the role of family car.

Set in a residential Paris suburb, the airy model home was voted a Top 100 initiative by the 2012 Rio Earth Summit. It already surpasses EU 2020 sustainability and environmental standards.

When young Norwegian mum Solveig Marie Ødegård decided she had to learn to drive to transport her new family around, she went to a local driving school, took some lessons and passed her test.

So far so normal. What makes Solveig Marie’s story so very different is that she took those lessons and passed the test in an electric car, a Nissan LEAF.
She has never, in her entire life, driven a car powered by a petrol or diesel engine.