Concept Twizy in 2009 and production Twizy today

Towards the end of 2009, zero-emission electric cars were little more than concept cars. At that year’s Frankfurt motor show Renault displayed four electric prototypes - the Fluence, Z.E sedan, the Kangoo Z.E van, the Twizy tandem two-seater and the ZOE subcompact… but that’s all they were: ideas. Electric cars were an utopian dream, something for the sci-fi magazines.

Olivier Chalouhi bought the very first all-electric Nissan LEAF sold in the world.  He lives in Northern California, and he placed his order online just after midnight on Aug. 31, 2010 when reservations opened for the car.  He completed the purchase a few months later at Northbay Nissan in Petaluma, Calif.

He has had his LEAF now for three years.  He and his wife have also grown their family to now include three children.“You can put three kids in the car with no problem, which is great when you have three kids,” said Chalouhi.Chalouhi first bought the LEAF because of the environment; but he said he has different motivations for driving electric now.

A fleet of zero-emission vehicles from Renault and Nissan is being used to shuttle delegates to and from the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, from Nov. 28-Dec. 9. The Alliance is at COP17 to demonstrate that our zero-emission vehicles - the first mass-produced EVs to ever run on the streets of Africa - offer a real affordable solution for drastically reducing CO2 emissions.  

Watch our video report from Durban

The Renault-Nissan Alliance wants to make it easier for people to switch to zero-emission vehicles. The Alliance aims to help policymakers and civic leaders worldwide understand the technological, political and environmental benefits of EVs.

In a recent story in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, Professor Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the University of Duisberg-Essen made reference to a proposed BMW electric vehicle, comparing it to other automakers product plans: “I don’t know of any other manufacturer that has conceived of a car exclusively as an electric vehicle,” Mr. Dudenhöffer said. “The rest are based on conventional cars.”

Not quite.

In fact, the Nissan LEAF, the world's first mass-marketed electric vehicle, was created from the ground-up to be only an electric car. It is not based on any other Nissan product. The Nissan LEAF goes on sale in Japan, US and select markets in Europe later this year. Further, two of the concept vehicles shown by Renault at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show - the Twizy ZE and ZOE ZE - will lead to production vehicles that are also developed from the start to be only electric.

Some weeks ago I told you about the sound of EVs and the growing concern regarding quiet cars and pedestrians safety. In 2007, Nissan started real world field research in collaboration with universities and institutions to develop a new type of audio visibility for pedestrians, and particularly for those visually impaired and young children.

You don’t need me to tell you what a difficult year 2009 was for the global car industry.