Plug it in, plug it in: Nissan to sell electric car in 3 years

Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun is reporting that Nissan is developing an all-electric subcompact car that it plans to sell by 2010. The electric car is being developed completely in-house and will use lithium-ion batteries to store its charge, which should last long enough for about 120 miles of travel. AutoblogGreen tells us that the car will have twice the range of the Nissan Hypermini EV (shown above), a small fleet of which were leased to the city of Pasadena, California back in 2000 but have since been "killed" by the company.

Nissan will also end its short alliance with Toyota, the only fruit of which was the use of Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive in the recently unveiled Altima Hybrid. In the future, Nissan will use a hybrid system of its own, developed in-house. The new hybrid-system should be ready by 2010 also and be used in compact cars, as well as likely replacing the Hybrid Synergy Drive in the Altima Hybrid.

[Source: AutoblogGreen and GreenCarCongress]