Nissan's EV Strategy

This article on Nissan's plans for moving towards electric vehicle and zero-emissions vehicle production, and their maneuvering for the creation of infrastructure necessary for such a proliferation, is pretty damn interesting:

• Nissan is bringing the first of their electric cars to market by 2010 in many locations around the United States. According to Alan Buddendeck, Nissan’s VP for North American Corporate Communications, this car will be priced between $22-$25K and have at least a range of 100 miles.

• By 2012, Nissan will be bringing an entire lineup of affordable electric cars (sedans, minivans, compact cars, and sports cars) to the world market. This isn’t just some limited roll-out, and they’re beyond serious about it. Their overarching business plan has been re-written to focus on zero emissions vehicles.

• Nissan has rolled out a rather ingenious plan of collaboration with as many state, local and federal organizations that are willing to cooperate with them to develop the infrastructure needed for an electric car-based society.

• They have taken much of their top-level engineering and marketing talent and fully diverted them into the electric car project. Besides allowing Nissan to reach their goals, this strategy seems to have energized and remoralized the company as a whole — you can see it in the way they present themselves.

• In addition to diverting huge amounts of resources to the project, Nissan has made the conscious decision to open otherwise proprietary information to their partners. Essentially it seems that Nissan has gone mildly “open source” in their approach to Getting Things Done. Power to the people.

It's a good article, you should read the whole thing.

EDIT: Here's some more info on Nissan's partnership fo bringing charging station infrastucture to California and Oregon.