Electric cars recently took a leap into the future when Nissan unveiled a prototype for an all-electric LEAF that can operate almost completely by itself at Japan’s largest showcase of electronics and information technology, CEATEC.

Not only can the LEAF park itself but, as Nissan explained to EarthTechling.Com, the car has a remote monitoring system that understands the environment around it via an all-around view camera and fourth generation (4G) mobile communications.

Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt sales – which the mainstream and EV press tend to use as the barometers of EV demand in the U.S. – rose in October with the monthly sales volume for the Volt hitting a record high of 2,961.

Nissan sold a much more respectable number of LEAFs than it did during the summer, pushing 1,579 off of dealer lots.

All told, GM has sold more than 30,000 Volts in the U.S. since Volt sales began a little less than two years ago while Nissan has sold about 15,000 LEAFs in about the same amount of time.

Denver was one of 65 cities in the U.S. to plug into National Plug In Day last weekend. Over the course of a perfect early fall blue-sky Colorado day, hundreds of people took an electric “pit stop” at Denver’s Forney Museum of Transportation.

National Plug in Day brought together EV lovers from across America to celebrate the latest accomplishments in the EV industry. This year marked the second year in a row that Denver hosted a National Plug in Day event.

“Denver was chosen as one of the locations last year and we had such great success, that a second event was definitely something that we wanted to host and I think this year we’ve seen double the amount of attendees and double the amount of vendors,” said Natalia Swalnick, Director of Environmental Health for the American Lung Association.

A free, 30-day test drive would go a long way toward showing consumers that the LEAF actually works for them.

No matter how you spin it, the Nissan LEAF is selling in depressingly low numbers in the United States – U.S. consumers bought or leased just 395 LEAFs in July. That’s right, just 395 in the entire USA!

There are a lot of reasons for this: Gas prices are too low; the LEAF is too expensive for too large a percentage of Americans; America is a land of short-term thinkers who will never see the long-term picture on anything, whether we’re talking about EV fuel savings or climate change; and, perhaps most damaging, the LEAF’s 70ish mile range is too little, psychologically, for 95 percent of Americans who will never buy the argument that most of them drive 40 miles or fewer per day and that the LEAF therefore offers sufficient range . . .

Unless, of course, a lot of these frustratingly-difficult-to-convince American drivers who really don’t need a car with a longer range than the LEAF (c’mon, half of them are in two car households for crying out loud!) but who, psychologically, absolutely believe they need more range, could literally be shown that the LEAF works for them.