Nissan Says Buyers Ready for Battery Cars, Infrastructure Isn’t
By Alan Ohnsman
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Co., seeking to lead a new market for battery-powered cars, said growing U.S. demand for all-electric vehicles will be tempered by the need for charging stations to power them.
“We know the consumers are interested and they’re ready,” Mark Perry, planning chief for Nissan’s U.S. electric car program, said in a Nov. 21 interview in San Francisco. “Infrastructure is going to be a challenge.”
The Tokyo-based carmaker is working with privately held Better Place in Israel and Denmark to create public venues to recharge battery-powered autos. Nissan said last week it will lease all-electric vehicles starting in 2010 in Oregon and California’s Sonoma County.
Perry said Nissan will collaborate with local officials in California to set up charging stations for the automaker’s first battery-powered cars, which will be designed to travel 100 miles (160 kilometers) on a single charge.
Better Place, a Palo Alto, California-based electric-car service, last week said it would eventually invest as much as $1 billion to create a battery supply system and recharging spots for electric cars in the San Francisco Bay area.
“You have to start with massive infrastructure even before you put in the cars,” Better Place founder Shai Agassi said in the interview. “Wherever you have a car, you’re going to have to have a charge spot.”
Battery-powered vehicles such as Nissan’s planned small car will have to be recharged at outlets because they’ll lack gasoline engines like conventional hybrids or future plug-in models including Toyota Motor Corp.’s next-generation Prius.
Under pressure to offer cleaner, more-efficient vehicles, automakers including Nissan, Toyota and General Motors Corp. are rushing to bring out new types of autos powered solely or in part by electricity.
Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn said last week at the Los Angeles Auto Show that “mass marketing” of its electric car begins in 2012. The company’s U.S. operations are based in Franklin, Tennessee.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Ohnsman in San Francisco at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: November 24, 2008 13:38 EST |
