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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Such cars have so far failed to break into the mainstream, partly because of their limited battery life.

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.

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.