Nissan will start taking reservations for the Leaf electric vehicle in April, start building them by October and have the first of them rolling into driveways in December.

The automaker outlined the timeline late Thursday at the end of a 24-city "Zero-Emission Tour" to build buzz for the Leaf electric car. The plan closely mirrors that of the Chevrolet Volt, putting Nissan and General Motors neck-and-neck in the race to be the first automaker with a mass-market EV in showrooms.

Nissan has spent three months showing off the Leaf during a coast-to-coast road trip to spread the EV gospel. The tour kicked off in Los Angeles, where Nissan CEO and avowed EV evangelist Carlos Ghosn said consumers would own the car but lease the battery.

Turns out that won't be the case.

There are many good reasons for leasing the battery – not the least of which is it separates the most expensive component from the rest of the car and brings down the sticker price significantly. But in the end it proved too complex. There were too many questions about how the car might be insured if Nissan owned the battery, how it might be financed and whether the car payment would include the cost of leasing the battery.

"When you start getting into all of that, it starts getting very complex," Alan Buddendeck, corporate v.p. of global communications, told Wired.com. "We want to make this as easy as possible for the consumer. The objective was to simplify the package by allowing the consumer to go all-in on a purchase or all-in on a lease."

For those who haven't been following the story, the Leaf is a four-door, five-passenger electric car that offers a claimed range of 100 miles. It tops out at 90 mph and charges in eight hours when you plug it into a 220-volt line like your dryer uses. Plug it into a 110 and you're looking at a glacial 14 to 15 hours to the get the job done. It takes a long time to "fill" a 24 kilowatt-hour battery. At some point we'll see 440-volt "quick charge stations" start appearing, at which point you'll be able to hit an 80 percent charge in a claimed 25 minutes.

As for the car itself, it is comparable to the Versa in size and performance, though the one we played with was much more nicely appointed.

Nissan won't say what the car costs until April, but it is shooting for a price in the $26,000 to $33,000 ballpark. The latest word is the car could be in the mid-20s after the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. That would seriously undercut the Volt, which General Motors is widely believed to be trying to keep under $40,000 before the tax credit, and make it competitive with the Toyota Prius hybrid.

So whattya do if you want one?

Register at the Leaf website, where Nissan says close to 50,000 people already have signed up. Registering gets you a spot at the head of the line when it comes time to reserve a car. Nissan starts taking reservations in April, shortly after it announces the price. Pony up the $100 fee and you're among the first in line to order a Leaf. Don't worry. The fee is refundable if you decide you want a 370Z instead. Nissan just wants make sure the people signing up are at least somewhat serious about ordering the car.

Nissan starts taking orders in August. Cars start rolling off the line by October and into showrooms – and driveways – in December. That doesn't mean everyone who wants one will get one that soon. It will take at least a couple of months for Nissan to ramp up production and it could be spring before things really get going. The cars will be built in Japan, but Nissan plans to move production to Smyrna, Tennessee by 2013. Nissan needs the time to retool the factory, which it is doing with the help of a $1.4 billion loan from the Department of Energy.

Buddendeck wouldn't say how many cars Nissan plans to produce in the first year, but the Associated Press quotes Carlos Tavares, chairman of Nissan of the Americas, saying 20,000 would be a reasonable figure given early interest in the Leaf. The company is working with its dealers and local authorities to help consumers navigate the process of installing the charging units needed to keep the car going.

"We want to make sure you don't have to go from one place to another to another to get a charger installed," Buddendeck said. "We want to make this seamless. We're doing everything possible to make this as easy as possible for consumers."

That will be vital to helping the cars succeed, a point BMW discovered during field tests of the Mini-E electric car. It found the permitting rules varied widely, with some cities making it snap and others making it a pain.

The Leaf will be available in several markets to start, including Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New York, Massachusetts, southern Florida and Tennessee, where Nissan has its North American headquarters. Those markets coincide with the places Nissan has been brokering deals with municipal officials, energy providers and others to develop the infrastructure needed to keep the cars going. But if someone outside those areas really wants a Leaf and their local Nissan dealer is authorized to service the car, they can probably get one, Buddendeck said.

There's a good chance people outside those areas will want one.

"It's been fascinating to see the level of interest and enthusiasm for the electric vehicles we've seen on this tour," Buddendeck said. "It's not just concentrated in California, or in the coastal areas. It was exciting because it confirmed we're onto something here."

Photo: Jon Snyder / Wired.com

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