Nissan announced yesterday that it planned to offer electric cars to a small number of fleet users in the US in 2010, followed by full scale sales to the public by 2012. Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of both Nissan and Renault, said that market pressure from consumers for green vehicles was a more powerful influence than government regulation.
Nissan has been perceived to be behind other manufacturers like Toyota and Honda, but no company has made such a clear commitment as Nissan made on Tuesday. It should not be a surprise, though. Nissan’s partner, Renault, had announced its part in an electric car project supported by the government of Israel. (See my posting on February 13th 2008.) The range of the vehicles announced then was only 40 to 70 miles, and the plan was to provide stations where quick battery changes could be made, rather than waiting for them to be charged.
The new news in yesterday’s announcement is therefore that electric cars will be marketed in the US. There was no mention of the range, which I think would need to be quite a bit better than 70 miles for the cars to be generally viable.
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