Nissan electrifies crowd in Tennessee with battery talk, no pie-eating
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You have to savor the irony: Tennessee – land of possum crackle and twangin’ guitars – is so resolutely red it couldn’t even bring itself to tilt for native son Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Barack Obama lost Tennessee by a whopping 400,000 votes in the presidential election of 2008. So, safe to say, dang librels ain’t welcome.
And yet, the Volunteer State is quickly becoming a haven for tree-hugging, carbon-hating, electric-car-loving progressives, in part thanks to Nissan. The company moved its U.S. headquarters to the Nashville area from Socal in 2006. Since then, Nissan – and corporate partner Renault – have aggressively pursued a battery electric vehicle (BEV) program.
On Monday, Nissan product planning and strategy director Mark Perry announced that Nissan’s plans to bring a dedicated BEV to the U.S in late 2010 remains on track, despite the ongoing autopocalypse. The car, as yet unnamed, will be comparable to a Versa in size, have a 100-mile range and be priced comparably to a conventional gas-powered car. Perry estimated a $1,350 annual saving in fueling costs as compared to a gas-powered model, and buyers will be able to claim a $7,500 federal tax credit.
“We want your payback to be immediate,” Perry said in a subsequent phone interview.
Perry also said Nissan would like to build the car, and the batteries, near the mothership in Smyrna, Tenn., to avoid costly currency fluctuations. Nissan is seeking a low-interest loan from the Department of Energy to build a lithium-ion battery factory in Tennessee. Nissan is just completing work on a new battery facility in Japan, a joint project with NEC. That facility will begin producing lithium-ion batteries this year.
Perry told the Chattanooga Engineers Club – now that sounds like one wild Christmas party – that Tennessee will also be one of the initial markets for the BEV, along with Oregon and Sonoma County in California. But, he cautioned, these are not “test” markets. “We’re coming,” he said. “We are going to be fielding a scalable, mass-market, mass-production, zero-emission vehicle. This is not a test or demonstration.”
Sonoma, sure. Oregon, OK. But Tennessee? Isn’t this all a little, well, granola for Tennessee? Actually not, Perry said. Chattanooga, he notes, has an electric car research facility, leased to the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Chattanooga’s city buses are free to the public and all-electric, with battery-swap stations to replace depleted batteries. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredeson has establishing a task force to develop not only the infrastructure, such as plug stations in public parking lots, but also the education and marketing of BEV. “The governor has been very supportive,” Perry said. Renault-Nissan, the state of Tennessee and the TVA recently formed a zero-emission vehicle alliance.
It’s the BEV-erly Hillbillies out there.
-- Dan Neil
Photos courtesy Nissan of North America, Paramount