Nissan is amping up its electric vehicle image by forming a partnership with utility company San Diego Gas & Electric Nissan will assist SDG&E in EV acquisition (this most likely means providing them electric vehicles) as well as work with SDG&E to develop plans to promote a charging infrastructure for EVs. Together, Nissan and SDG&E will form a working team with area agencies, institutions and companies to work towards the implementation and maintenance of a battery charging network and establish and support education activities designed to promote the use of EVs.

This pretty much sounds like an exercise on paper with no actual battery charging stations built. One can imagine Romulus and Rebus developing plans and forming working teams before a single stone was laid to build Rome, too.

The San Diego partnership expands on a broader effort by Renault-Nissan Alliance, which has begun ZEV initiatives in Israel, Denmark, Portugal, the Principality of Monaco, Kanagawa Prefecture and Yokohama city (Japan), and has formed partnerships with the French electric utility company EDF, the Swiss electric utility company Energie Ouest Suisse, the private-car hire service "greentomatocars" (UK) and with zero-emission transport system company "elektromotive" (UK). In the United States, the Alliance has agreed to ZEV partnerships in Tennessee, Oregon, Sonoma County, CA and Tucson, AZ.

Nissan says they will introduce an electric car to the U.S. market in 2010. Plug in hybrids are coming, although no one can answer how I'm going to plug my vehicle in from my 10th floor apartment.

We have to start somewhere. But forming partnerships to study the situation is still a long way from putting a shovel in the ground.

--Kate McLeod