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The City of Vancouver and BC Hydro will help bring Nissan’s LEAF EV into fleet use a year before it goes on sale worldwide.

October 17, 2009

Vancouver emerges as Canada's electric car testing ground

VANCOUVER – It’s hard to think of a better place than Vancouver if you want to establish a beachhead for electric cars in Canada.

With its self-styled green image, openness to new technology and increasingly congested streets, the city seems like an ideal place to test drive zero-emission electric vehicles (EVs) and the infrastructure they need to make them practical.

Word that Nissan-badged EVs will be arriving in 2011 is cementing its reputation.

Whether EVs become a practical, affordable alternative to conventional internal-combustion-powered vehicles remains to be seen. The jury’s still out on hybrids - which use some of the same technology - more than a decade after the first Toyota Prius and Honda Insight turned a wheel.

What’s undeniable is that major automakers are spending heavily to find out.

The Nissan-Renault Alliance has signed a memorandum of understanding with Vancouver and BC Hydro to bring Nissan’s LEAF EV into fleet use a year before it goes on sale worldwide.

Mark McDade, Nissan Canada’s EV project manager, stresses this is not a test run for a pre-production prototype.

"These are not early trials for Nissan Canada," he says. "These are production-ready, ready-for-consumption vehicles."

Vancouver already has a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle in its fleet – a Prius sporting a conversion module that allows for charging on the grid and increases its electrical capacity 10 times.

It also has an agreement with Nissan competitor Mitsubishi to test two of the Japanese automaker’s i-MiEV models, scheduled to arrive later this year.

McDade acknowledges the Mitsubishi will be rolling in first, but that’s about all he’ll concede.

"Our car’s a real car in the sense that it is a five-door, fully equipped, full-amenities vehicle," he says. "It accommodates five people, in comparison to the Mitsubishi vehicle. It is a two-seater; it is a very, very small car."

Clearly the EV stakes are rising.

Daimler AG, makers of Mercedes-Benz, confirmed last week it will begin producing electric versions of its tiny smart car at a French plant in 2012, with an initial 1,000-unit production run scheduled for this fall. Mercedes-Benz Canada confirms smart EVs will be sold in Canada.

The decade-old Nissan-Renault Alliance originates with the French company's 1999 bailout of financially ailing Nissan, which gave it a controlling stake in the Japanese firm.

They now share design and engineering resources, as well as vehicle platforms.

On the EV front, McDade says the alliance is co-operating on technology, especially on battery development. Nissan-Renault have a joint venture with Nippon Electric Co., which McDade says leads in this crucial area.

The LEAF’s lithium-ion battery produces twice the normal output but is half the size of a conventional battery pack, he says. It will have a lifespan of at least five years under normal use, and McDade says Nissan is considering a battery-replacement program for EV buyers.

The LEAF – the capitalized letters apparently do not stand for anything - will have a range of 160 kilometres of stop-and-go city driving. It can be recharged with normal 110-volt household current, 208-volt systems normally used for stoves, washers and dryers, and eventually 480-volt quick-chargers.

No firm vehicle numbers have been mentioned, but Brian Beck, the City of Vancouver's sustainability group project manager, says similar Nissan-Renault agreements with U.S. cities such as Seattle typically involve 300 cars.

McDade also points out the deal is not a definitive sales agreement, just an understanding at this point.

"It is really an agreement to work together with our partners to find solutions to our common goals," he says. "This goal being the viability and the future of zero-emission mobility."

What he means is the future of the deal, and Nissan’s larger plans to market EVs, will depend on whether the city makes it practical.

"We’re ultimately concerned about mass-marketing this vehicle to the general public," says McDade.

"We will not go into a marketplace unless the supporting infrastructure, the charging stations, are there."

On that front, the signs are good.

Vancouver now has a bylaw requiring all new single-family homes and off-street bicycle storage rooms to have dedicated electric plug-in outlets.

New condo developments will have to have charging stations on 20 per cent of their parking spaces and the city is also planning a pilot program for public recharging stations. Beck says the city is also trying to work with Ottawa to find incentives to retrofit older buildings with chargers.

The city has also received federal permission to permit the use of so-called neighbourhood EVs, which cannot exceed 40 kilometres an hour.

BC Hydro has begun developing guidelines for charging infrastructure [PDF, 1.56 MB] at homes, businesses and public streets, citing forecasts that anywhere from 10 to 60 per cent of vehicles will be electric-powered within 15 years.

Other cities are watching Vancouver's experience closely and McDade says Nissan-Renault is negotiating with other cities and provinces for similar agreements.

And while Vancouver’s generally gentler winters are easier on EVs, whose battery efficiency suffers in the cold unless they’re kept heated, McDade says Nissan’s car will operate anywhere.

"The vehicle does work in the cold," he says. "Every jurisdiction will have to deal with that and the infrastructure will have to accommodate those kinds of things."

© 2009 The Canadian Press