YOKOHAMA, Japan, Dec 2 - Over the past few years, Eiji Makino has met with heads of state, governors and mayors around the globe pursuing an unconventional strategy for Nissan's new electric car, the Leaf: lining up support for the model before it was even on the road. Electric cars need to recharge around town and a growing number of governments, seeking to reduce oil dependence and clean up the environment, have agreed to subsidise that kind of infrastructure.
The Nissan-Renault car alliance put together more than 80 such agreements across five continents, with the first batch of its zero-emission cars reaching customers only this month. "At first we had no clue which regions to attack," Makino, who was put in charge of Nissan Motor's strategy for electric vehicles in 2008, said at the company's global headquarters in the Japanese port city of Yokohama. "Portugal was the first partnership we signed, and that made sense because they were promoting renewable energy."
Later he reached a pact with China, which has long relied on low-grade coal to make cheap electricity and had not been known for its commitments to green solutions. "It was completely unexpected," Makino said.
Many people may be surprised by the coming green car revolution.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ To read this story on PDF: http://link.reuters.com/med28q For related story on "Smart City" [ID:nL3E6N206M] Graphic on Leaf vs other EVs: http://link.reuters.com/dam57q Graphic on charging stations:http://link.reuters.com/jam57q
TV segment on this story: http://www.reuters.com/news/video/story?videoId=165527581&videoC hannel=5 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nissan is not the first to roll out electric vehicles, which plug into an electric outlet to charge the battery and have an electric motor instead of an internal combustion engine.
Mitsubishi Motors came out last year with the egg-shaped i-MiEV, while niche newcomer Tesla Motors put its Roadster hot-rod out in 2008. But sales of those cars are still in the thousands.
What Nissan and its French partner Renault SA are doing is something no other auto maker has attempted before: getting governments and infrastructure providers involved on a global scale from the start to create, for the first time ever, a sizeable market for zero-emission vehicles.
If all goes to plan, this month's launch of the Leaf, which gets the mileage equivalent of 99 miles per gallon, will mark a major milestone in the history of the automobile and the future of the internal combustion engine.
It's also a crucial step in the Franco-Japanese pair's attempt to win green points and lift their brand images after years of trailing rivals such as Toyota , Honda and Volkswagen
That effort got a lift on Monday when a panel of journalists named the Leaf the 2011 European Car of the Year, the first electric vehicle to be chosen for the award.
"NORMAL CAR"
The car is being competitively priced to match up with conventional cars, taking into account lower running costs.
The five-seater Leaf hatchback is expected to cost just under 3 million yen after subsidies in Japan, and about 30,000 euros in European countries. The mid-sized vehicle will be about $25,000 in the United States with a federal tax credit, and as low as $20,280 in California, which will offer further credits.
The sticker price on General Motors' Volt, a plug-in hybrid rolling out this month that will compete with the Leaf, will be around $41,000.
But how good is the Leaf on a spin around the block?
On two test drives -- on the streets of Lisbon and at Nissan's proving ground near Yokohama -- the authors were impressed with the instant engine torque and acceleration of a car with a maximum speed of 145 kilometres an hour. Packing no piston-pumping engine, the car rode silently and smoothly.
In Saitama, a city just north of Tokyo, residents who had won an online lottery to test-drive the Leaf also gave it a thumbs-up. "I knew it was going to be quiet because I'd been in other EVs before," said Kazuhiro Futamura, a 36-year-old businessman. "But the acceleration, steering, response -- it was linear, if you know what I mean. I thought that was quite impressive," said Futamura, who had also ridden in BMW's experimental Mini E and the i-MiEV. At Nissan's proving ground in Oppama, a stone's throw from the factory that began building the Leaf in October, racing driver Seiji Ara said it was obvious the engineers had paid close attention to the ease and precision of how the car handles. "The car does exactly what you tell it to do," said Ara, who races on a Nissan-backed team and was taking journalists on a joyride in the GT-R sports machine one September weekend. "It's a difficult area to master, but also very important," he said, adding that the Tesla Roadster lacked that quality and drove more like an on-or-off switch.
Nissan says the central concept for the Leaf was to make it seem like a "normal" car -- right down to the faint but audible humming sound that engineers programmed into it to make sure pedestrians heard the car approaching at low speeds.
This wasn't a car for "zealots", a term Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn often uses to describe owners of other EV niche models, such as the Tesla. To enter the mainstream, it had to be on the shopping list of the average Joe, and not just the "eco warriors" that would buy a zero-emission car at any cost.
RANGE ANXIETY
One of the biggest hurdles engineers had to overcome in appealing to a mass market was range anxiety, a term that has entered the auto industry lexicon to describe drivers' worries about being stranded in an electric car with no juice left.
Because lithium-ion batteries are still expensive, Nissan is stacking just enough for a driving range of 100 miles on a full charge, a quarter that of a typical petrol-powered car. Even though market research showed that about 90 percent of the world's drivers travel less than 60 km a day, surveys show range anxiety is a major concern for consumers.
To quell those fears, Nissan has employed advances in information technology to link the Leaf's onboard computer to a data centre to tell drivers how much power they have left -- even remotely on their mobile phones or desktops -- and how far they could travel with it. The car's navigation system will indicate the coverage range on the map, as well as available charging spots in the vicinity.
"It's going to be important to change consumers' mindset," said Masato Sase, an automotive consultant at Deloitte Tohmatsu. "Consumers' initial reaction to Nissan's Leaf could really determine the momentum for EVs."
Nissan isn't taking any chances.
The first owners will go through a vetting process to ensure they are technically and psychologically ready for an EV. That means anyone expecting to drive more than 100 miles a day on a regular basis would be steered towards one of its internal combustion engine cars.
"We feel we have a responsibility as to what kind of customer we will sell the car to," said Thomas Ebeling, General Manager of Product Planning and Strategy for EVs and small cars at Nissan International. "We don't want to say no to anyone on principle but as a customer you have to buy into the concept too," he said at a test drive event in Lisbon.
Both car makers are considering a dedicated EV breakdown service for early customers. Thierry Koskas, head of Renault's Electric Vehicle project, said it would probably involve the car being towed to a charge point.
