Green Options

According to CEO Carlos Ghosn, unlike its other Japanese rivals, Nissan has made a strategic decision to cede the standalone hybrid wars to them and will not make hybrid-only models such as Toyota’s Prius or Honda’s Insight.

With one of Nissan’s senior EV project engineers sitting next to me, it felt like I was being expectantly doted on by a protective parent as I drove Nissan’s EV-02 electric test car around a closed course Monday. Given that the EV-02 is only one of two such cars in the world, the reaction was perhaps understandably warranted.

Earlier in the day Nissan had held a joint press conference with Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, and representatives from Portland General Electric, to further affirm Oregon’s burgeoning relationship with Nissan to be one of the first and premier locations for the company’s late 2010 electric car launch.

In his keynote address at the 2008 LA Auto Show today, Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan-Renault, announced a wide-ranging partnership to develop electric cars and an electric car charging network with the State of Oregon.

Citing Oregon’s environmental leadership in developing the transportation infrastructure of tomorrow, Ghosn also said that Nissan would be releasing their first electric car for the US market in Oregon in 2010. After releasing electric cars in Oregon in 2010, Ghosn then affirmed that Nissan-Renault will bring an “entire lineup” of zero emission electric cars to the worldwide market by 2012.

I was in the overflow room watching Ghosn on a big screen when he announced all this, so nobody was clapping, but this is definitely some of the biggest news to come out of the LA Auto Show this year — if not the biggest.