Tennessee is test area for Nissan Leaf

In December, about 900 cars and 2,500 charging stations will be coming to three Tennessee markets - Knoxville, Nashville and Chattanooga, said Katherine Zachary, corporate spokeswoman for Nissan North America.

"We are launching the car in test markets first, then across the country," she said.

Zachary said she did not know exactly how many cars and charging stations would be in each city. The stations would be solar-assisted and be able to accommodate four to six vehicles at a time.

Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore and other local officials were on hand at World's Fair Park for an unveiling and demonstration of the Nissan LEAF. It's a five-seat, medium-size hatchback powered by an electric motor driven by laminated compact lithium-ion batteries. The LEAF has a range of about 100 miles on a charge, and full-charging takes about eight hours. Zachary said charging can be done through a 220-volt home outlet overnight. Batteries for the car will be made at the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn.

Nissan has several partners in the effort, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), city of Knoxville and Knoxville Utilities Board.

The initial cars will be available through dealers in December, Zachary said. Nissan North American will take reservations for the LEAF this spring at its Web site, www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car. Also this spring, EPRI and ORNL will begin testing the charging stations. The plan calls for three to six months of tests, then building the stations in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville over the next few years.

Zachary said the proximity of TVA and ORNL were among factors making Knoxville an attractive area to test the cars and charging stations. Kilgore said the project is a natural for TVA, which produces electrical power for 9 million customers across seven states.

"These new vehicles are going to need a new kind of filling station," Kilgore told those gathered at World's Fair Park.

Kilgore said the system will help TVA toward its goal of eventually producing at least half of its power through clean and renewable energy sources.

Arshad Mansoor, vice president of power delivery and utilization at Knoxville-based EPRI said the charging stations, which his company is helping develop, are a key part of the system because they will link the technologies involved in the car with those supplying the power grid, such as TVA and KUB. Standardization is the key to developing a charging system that can be put in place across the country, Mansoor said.

The Nissan project is not the only effort to establish a charging system for electric vehicles in Knoxville. The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, ORNL, Knoxville Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority are working on a project to develop Pellisippi Parkway from Oak Ridge to McGhee Tyson Airport into an integrated transportation corridor, serving a variety of transportation modes and including charging stations for electrical vehicles.

The Tennessee projects are part of an overall effort by Nissan to use a $100 million grant from the Electric Transportation Engineering Corp. through the Department of Energy to put 4,700 zero-emission vehicles and 11,000 charging stations in test markets across the country.

Bill Riley, owner of Twin City Nissan, on 3247 Airport Highway in Alcoa, attended the unveiling and said he believes the car is right on the mark for the market, based on the demand he has been seeing for fuel efficient cars.

While some might doubt the chances of success for an all-electric car before a system of charging infrastructure is in place, Riley said the combination of TVA and ORNL working together should speed things along.

"I think it is going to be pushed into place fairly quickly," he said.