The zero-emission Nissan LEAF is at the heart of an innovative new car-sharing scheme in the Canadian city of Montreal.

Cost has always been one of the major stumbling blocks to bringing electric vehicles to market. The cars are expensive to develop and the battery packs are a complex new technology (at this scale and performance) and currently more expensive to build than traditional internal combustion engines. As a consequence, electric vehicles have either been high-priced niche products or limited production concept vehicles. Our objective has always been for the price of our zero-emission vehicles to be at the same purchase price as a comparable gasoline or diesel engined vehicle.

Great news! The Alliance has two cars, the Nissan Leaf and Dacia Duster, on the shortlist for the 2011 European Car of the Year award.

The shortlist of seven cars has been narrowed down from an initial field of 41 cars and the winner will be announced on November 29.

The ambitions of Renault-Nissan to be the world leader in zero emissions have received timely boosts – and this time well away from the Salon d’Auto in Paris.

Leading hire car company Avis has just announced that it has pre-ordered 500 Renault EVs while LeasePLan has signed an agreement with Nissan to offer the LEAF on its fleet in Europe from next year.