FIRSTDRIVE NISSAN CUBENISSAN, PRETTY much absent from the hybrid scene up to now, aside from some activity in the US, tells The Irish Timesit is just weeks away from unveiling what will be its electric vehicle for the masses – and not a petrol cap in sight.
Nissan has formed a strong alliance with Renault with the intention of being a pioneer in the area of fully electric vehicles.
Up until now we have been shown electric vehicles that look a little weird or are too small for practical purposes. But when the new car is revealed it is expected to be a proper five-seater C-segment hatchback that will drive in the same manner as a normal car but will require seven hours of charging from a domestic plug or 40 minutes of charging from a special quick charger.
Nissan envisage a situation where your mobile phone will not only alert you when your car is fully charged or when it is in need of charging, it will be used to pay for any electricity you need from quick charge points.
The car will have a range of about 160km (80 per cent of Europeans drive less than 100km a day). Nissan have already worked on agreements with rental car companies for special rates for when drivers need a car, on occasion, to travel further.
At Nissan’s European headquarters outside Geneva, we were presented with EV-02 (it is an electric vehicle, and this is number two).
This is a Nissan Cube, a cute Japanese odd-ball that we should see in Ireland next year. Under the skin are lithium ion batteries, a connector box, a power inverter and transformer, and an electric motor and reducer, all of which add up to silence, powerful acceleration and, crucially, no tailpipe emissions.
In terms of the batteries, Nissan’s partner NEC has opted for a seemingly stable, manganate-doped, lithium-ion formulation and say the battery can be easily recycled. It has its own factory to produce them, too.
The Cube drives better than most of the electric vehicles we have already tried. There was little of the mental adjustment to the way it propelled itself. The Mini E we drove recently was really fast but when you took your foot off the accelerator it lost speed so quickly, it acted like a brake. Not so here: the Nissan EV was smooth, silent and easy to use.
Nissan Europe’s senior vice-president Simon Thomas said: “EV is a vehicle choice that will change the way you buy a vehicle, change the way you own a vehicle and it changes the infrastructure that is required to support it . . . It will be a permanent feature and will change things more than people anticipate.”
Thomas says they will go into production soon. “We have committed to go into mass production in 2012, so we actually go into production in 18 months time. Our battery production has already started.”
With the Government setting ambitious targets of having Ireland running 10 per cent of all vehicles from electric power by 2020, it may no longer be down to product but infrastructure and Government backing to make this new dawn a reality.