Nissan Joins What Car? / Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership / Revolve Green Car Day In London

LONDON – June 6, 2009: Passionate about Zero Emission Mobility? Nissan is – and to prove it we are proudly lending our support to the What Car? / Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership / REVOLVE ‘green’ car day at City Hall, Central London on 8 June, with a display of the Nissan X-Trail Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCV).

What Car?, the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership and REVOLVE have combined to provide a whole day of events; including the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership annual conference in the morning, an ‘eco-rally’ for green cars starting from Brighton and ending up with a rendezvous at City Hall to join a wide-ranging display of green cars, and the annual What Car? Green Awards in the evening.

The Nissan X-Trail FCV, part of Nissan’s fleet participating in the California Fuel Cell Partnership trials in the US, has featured in a wide variety of low carbon vehicle events throughout Europe over the last year. The X-Trail FCV continues to draw attention to the growth of the UK infrastructure and support for low carbon mobility – acting as a catalyst to bring together like-minded organisations including local and national government, academic institutions and regional development agencies in order to assure a clean future for mobility in the UK.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance will introduce zero-emission vehicles in the United States and Japan, starting with electric vehicles, from 2010. The Alliance aims to take the leadership of zero-emission mobility in the automotive industry and will start mass-marketing electric vehicles globally in 2012. To date the Alliance has signed two final agreements in Europe with Portugal and the Principality of Monaco. The two agreements formulate concrete proposals – ranging from incentives and infrastructures to education programmes – creating the right conditions for mass availability and acceptance of electric vehicles.

Along with this near-term plan to introduce electric vehicles to the mass-market globally by 2012, the FCV work is a longer-range programme designed to enhance practicality and reduce costs of the technology, and includes the plan to release newer generation, developmental FCVs in the 2010s. Nissan is now developing a third generation of its proprietary fuel cell stack, with increased longevity, greater power and further weight reductions.