Tennessee will be one of the first states to be plug-in ready if Nissan's plans to launch its electric vehicle stay on track.

In the past year, the Japanese auto maker has signed numerous deals with electric car charger manufacturers, scientific researchers and utilities to build an infrastructure of charging stations across the country. The partnerships all are geared toward the late-2010 planned launch of the vehicle for government fleet and commercial use. Mass-market production of the family sedan is scheduled to start in Smyrna for 2012 launch.  

“The time is right for merging of multiple industries,” said Linda Goodspeed, CIO of Nissan North America, at a meeting of Women in Technology of Tennessee that was held at Nissan's Franklin HQ hours after the company announced it will receive a $1.6 billion loan for its Smyrna plant from the Department of Energy. Nissan's Smyrna factory plans to ramp up production to 150,000 vehicles a year eventually.

In Tennessee, the auto maker is working in partnership with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop energy-efficient battery-powered cars.

“Nashville is one of our launch markets,” said Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning. “In fact, Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) are competing to see who gets the first EV to drive for themselves.”

Nissan also has teamed up with Palo Alto-based Better Place to develop the infrastructure for charging stations in Israel. In the United States, the auto maker has partnerships with state governments and utility companies to develop the infrastructure. Goodspeed said such networks of stations – in addition to Tennessee, these are also planned for Sonoma County, San Diego, Washington D.C. and other markets – will help increase the efficiency of the electric grid. Goodspeed said utilities currently lose 88 percent of the energy produced in the transmission and delivery process.

The TVA and its distributor partners are performing distribution modeling with the Electric Power Research Institute, the authority said. It is also investigating various studies to assess the impacts from electric vehicles on the grid when actual cars are plugged in to charge.

Electric vehicles will primarily target compact, dense cities, such as Los Angeles, Goodspeed said. Cities are the heaviest contributors to pollution. Initially, the infrastructure around electric vehicles will be best used for short-distance trips around the cities.

One charge will power Nissan's electric vehicle for 100 miles and it will cost about 90 cents to “fill the tank,” the company says. A full charge will require around a night's sleep, Nissan says. Plug-in vehicles from Nissan also will be able to be recharged by chargers of other car manufacturers.

Nissan is not worried about any competition from hybrid cars with already higher fuel efficiency than gasoline-run cars. “It's a different market segment,” said Katherine Zachary, corporate communications manager at Nissan.

But with Toyota, Honda and GM also in the race to build the most efficient battery-powered car, there is a real sense of a race developing to capture this new market.

"Excited about the future?" Goodspeed asked.

As of today, many more Middle Tennesseeans are.