Nissan unveils prototype electric, hybrid vehicles
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Nissan Motor Co on Wednesday unveiled an all-electric vehicle and an original gas-electric hybrid prototype prior to the vehicles’ planned launch in Japan and North America in fiscal 2010. The move by the nation’s third-largest automaker is aimed at pulling ahead in the increasingly competitive market for fuel-efficient vehicles.
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Nissan said the front-wheel drive, boxy-shaped electric car has a newly developed 80 kilowatt motor with advanced lithium-ion batteries installed under the vehicle’s floor to avoid taking up space.
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The laminated batteries, jointly developed with electronics giant NEC Corp, pack twice the electric power of conventional nickel-metal hydride batteries currently used in hybrid and electric cars, it said.
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Nissan aims to start selling an electric car in the United States and Japan in 2010 and the rest of the world in 2012. It will have a new “unique bodystyle” that is not based on any existing model, the company said.
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Nissan has been slower than rivals Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co to embrace petrol-electric hybrids, but it aims to become the industry leader in electric vehicles.
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Such cars have so far failed to break into the mainstream, partly because of their limited battery life.
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Nissan is also developing hydrogen fuel-cell cars as well as its own hybrid system, betting that zero-emission vehicles will take a 15% share of the global auto market in the future.
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The company also unveiled a prototype hybrid which will also be launched in the U.S. and Japan in 2010, as well as a new, slimmer fuel cell stack with double the power density of previous ones and 35 percent lower costs.
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