Nissan Making Big Push for Electric Vehicles in Europe

It looks like Renault and its corporate sibling Nissan are making a big push for electric cars in Europe. Renault announced its moderately priced Zoe electric car at the Geneva Motor Show on Monday, and now Nissan is planning a major increase in Leaf sales and infrastructure in Europe. 

Nissan is planning to increase its Leaf dealers from 110 in 14 European markets now to over 1000 in 24  European markets by March 2013. It will have charging stations for the Leaf at every one of these dealers. Nissan claims that it will have 700 completed Leaf dealers in Europe by April 2012.

"This is a big year for the Nissan LEAF in Europe and we are committed to creating an environment for electric mobility to thrive across the continent. 2011 was a huge year for us and with all of these significant and tangible improvements to infrastructure, dealer network, incentives, and production we are looking forward to significant growth in the lead up to European Production," said Paul Wilcox senior vice president of sales for Nissan. 

To make charging easier, Nissan has developed its own quick charging station that it claims can charge the Leaf, or other compliant electric vehicles like the Renault Zoe, to an 80% charge within 30 minutes. This station costs less than €10,000. Nissan is giving 400 of these stations for free to cities in Europe with high Leaf sales. It is expecting that thousands of these stations will be operational by the end of 2012. 

A major public concern with current electric cars is what should be done with the batteries when they are no longer functional enough to be used for the car. Nissan and Renault are working together on what they call the Second Life program. Its focus is to find uses for partially discharged batteries and people who might want to buy them. They say that they will have more concrete details about the Second Life program in the coming year. 

In March, Nissan is also launching a new advertising and marketing campaign in Europe to convince drivers of 100% electric driving. 

As the first step in bringing the Leaf's production to Europe, Nissan will begin producing the car's batteries at its Sunderland, UK, factory. Eventually, Nissan also plans to begin building the Leaf completely in Sunderland. 

It certainly looks like Nissan and Renault want to bring the fight to Toyota in terms of green vehicles in Europe. It will be intriguing to see if electric vehicles catch on better in Europe than the US. The Leaf has been struggling in the US, but perhaps the more urban culture in most of Europe will take to the green vehicle.