Nissan electric car Leaf starts retailing next year in five markets

Just days after pulling the wraps off of its prototype Leaf electric vehicle in Japan, Nissan Motor Co. says it has committed to an early launch of 5,000 sales in the United States, starting late next year.

The plan will require Nissan North America to begin retailing the Leaf at U.S. dealerships two years ahead of the schedule outlined by Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.

The first 5,000 U.S. Leafs will take part in a five-market study of electric-vehicle driving habits. Nissan and various public utilities and government agencies want to make sure they understand how consumers recharge their vehicles.

Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning and strategy, says it is not merely a market test but rather the bona fide launch of mass electric-vehicle retailing.

"We're moving fast," Perry says. "This is not a test to determine whether or not it's going to work. This is the beginning of mass marketing."

Buy them

Customers will buy the cars from dealerships. But they must agree to have their recharging habits monitored through an onboard black box for their first two years of ownership.

Nissan will qualify which consumers get to purchase the first 5,000 Leafs. Perry says there will be some screening to make sure the cars are purchased by consumers who can provide meaningful data.

"We don't want these first cars going to somebody who commutes 150 miles a day or who lives a great distance from a recharging station," he says.

Nissan has said the Leaf will be affordable, but it has not revealed the price.

DOE money

The catalyst behind the early startup is a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to Electric Transportation Engineering Corp., a Phoenix technology supplier. That firm must install 12,500 recharging stations in Nissan's first five markets: the Phoenix-Tucson corridor of Arizona; Oregon; San Diego; Seattle and Tennessee.

Matching funds are being provided by the cities and states, for a total investment of $199.6 million.

The recharging data will be turned over to the Department of Energy, which required Nissan to have 1,000 vehicles on the road in everyday use to make the data valid.

Nissan originally said it would launch electric-vehicle fleet sales in the United States in 2010 and start retail sales through its dealerships in 2012. But Perry has maintained that retail sales could start earlier than 2012 if individual markets and dealers were ready.

Perry says Nissan still intends to launch U.S. fleet sales of the electric car next year. Those sales will be in addition to the 5,000 cars participating in the data collection.

By Lindsay Chappell- Automotive News