Nissan turns attention to EV recharging infrastructure

Nissan has signed a partnership with the State of Tennessee to explore the infrastructure needed to support electric vehicles. The agreement will help pave the way for the company's fully electric vehicle, to be introduced in 2010.

There isn't much meat on the bones of the announcement, which centres around a memorandum of understanding signed by Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn and Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen. The memo turns informal non-committal discussions into what appear to be slightly less informal non-committal discussions.

"The MoU is non-binding, so it doesn't set forth any hard, fast commitments, " admitted Nissan spokesperson Fred Standish. "It's symbolic in nature, there's no doubt about that."

The deal nevertheless gets the firm significant psychological support on its newly discovered home turf. It was announced with a fanfare as Ghosn opened the company's new American headquarters in Tennessee. The MoU covers a triangle between Nashville, the home of the new HQ in Franklin, and Murfreesboro, near a major Nissan manufacturing plant.

Nissan is holding talks with institutions inside that triangle, including large energy producer the Tennessee Valley Authority, several universities and real estate developers, about developing recharging facilities, Standish added.

The agreement also provides further evidence that auto manufacturers and policy-makers are turning their attention to the infrastructure that will be required to support the expected increased demand for electric vehicles. It comes just a day after General Motors (GM) signed a similar multi-state initative to prepare the US for electric vehicles, while on this side of the Atlantic London mayor Boris Johnson announced plans for an increase in the number of recharging points across the capital.

Nissan is committing heavily to fully electrical vehicles, which unlike the Prius and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles such as GM's Volt, have no fossil fuel component to their engines at all. Other auto vendors are also gearing up for the introduction of electric-powered vehicles, of which there are relatively few in the US to date other than Tesla's Li-Ion-powered Roadster and Zenn Motors' Zenn urban vehicle.

Reports also emerged yesterday that BMW is planning an electrically powered model of the Mini to be launched in the US in 2009.