The prototype of Nissan's forthcoming electric car may look like a breadbox, but the technology beneath that boxy body could propel the Japanese automaker to the front of the EV pack when the car hits the road next year.

Nissan may be a small player compared to the likes of General Motors, Toyota and Honda, but it's probably the most committed to EVs. CEO Carlos Ghosn has said in no uncertain terms that cars with cords are the future of the automobile. And he's backed that up with an all-in bet on a practical, affordable hatchback with decent range, reasonable recharge time and room for five people. Oh - and Nissan says it'll cost about 90 cents to charge.

"It's a real car with 100-mile range," said Mark Perry, Nissan's director of product planning. "We may not be the first to market with an EV, but we'll be the first to mass-market an EV."

Forget hydrogen and ethanol. Electricity is the next big thing in cars. Just about everyone has jumped on the EV bandwagon, and most of the major automakers promise to have one on the road between 2010 and 2012. General Motors has garnered the most attention for the Chevrolet Volt, a range-extended EV we'll see by the end of 2010. But GM is hardly alone. BMW is deploying a test fleet of electric Minis. Daimler is working on an electric Smart city car. Tesla Motors recently unveiled its gorgeous sedan. Ford is working on an electric car based on the Fusion or Fiesta, and even Chrysler is getting in on the act with cars we might see in a year or two if it's still in business.

Every one of them could end up following Nissan to the party.

"Nissan could end up being the come-from-behind leader in the EV space because Carlos Ghosn has pushed them so aggressively," said Darryl Siry, an electric car expert and clean tech analyst at Peppercom. "Nissan is making moves that could make it the major mass-market EV

player among the established automakers."

Nissan brought the prototype to San Francisco and let us take it for a spin.

The car we'll see in showrooms by the end of 2010 won't look like the prototype, which is a Cube city car fitted with an electric motor and lithium-ion battery pack. The as-yet-unnamed car slated for production will be a five-door hatchback based on a "heavily modified" Versa chassis. Perry wouldn't give us any hints about what the production model will look like, but he promised it will be distinctive — yet restrained.

"We want it to be iconic," he said. "We want people to look at it and know it's an EV. But we want it to be a real car. It can't be strange."

Our test drive was limited to a half-mile loop around a big parking lot near San Francisco Bay, so we can't offer a definitive assessment. But we can tell you the drivetrain offered brisk acceleration — a hallmark of electric motors, which offer great torque — and the car felt nimble. Everything about it felt like we'd just driven it off the showroom floor.

"The performance is 99 percent there," Perry said of drivetrain development. "This is essentially what we're going to launch with."

And though the electro-Cube we tooled around in was relatively spartan, Perry says the production model will be top-shelf.

"We're building this car for consumers," he said. "It will have navi. It will have stereo. It will have A/C and power seats. All the things you want and expect will be in this car."

The car will use a lithium-ion battery pack that Perry says will recharge in four hours if you plug it into a 220 volt socket — the same kind your washer and drier are plugged into. Plug it into a 110 and you're looking at 14 hours. If you've got a 440 volt line — and Perry says many businesses do — you can get an 80 percent charge in just 26 minutes.

Perry wouldn't say anything at all about the car's specs, but Siry said the 100-mile range suggests the car will have a 20-kilowatt battery. As for those recharge times, Siry said, "all those numbers make sense. They're about right."

So what's it gonna cost? Perry wouldn't give us a specific figure but said it will be comparable to Nissan's family sedans. For what it's worth, the Altima starts at about $20,000 and the Maxima starts at $30,000. And the EV will qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit. Perry said the EV won't carry the price premium often found on hybrids because Nissan wants to make it as affordable as possible.

"We're going for volume," he said. "We're targeting the mass market and mass sales."

What kind of volume? Perry said the goal is an initial run of as many as 10,000 cars when the car goes on sale in 15 markets — including the San Francisco Bay Area; Portland, Oregon; Tucson, Arizona; San Diego and elsewhere — nationwide by the end of 2010. The first cars will be offered to fleets, but Perry said they'll be available to the public if there's a demand for them. Production will ramp up from there, with worldwide sales by 2012. Perry says the forthcoming EV will be part of a "portfolio" of electric cars Nissan will offer in the years to come.

All of those cars will need somewhere to plug in when they aren't in driveways, so Nissan is working with utility companies and local, state and national governments (United States, Japan, Israel and several European countries) to develop public charging infrastructure.

As for what the car will cost to operate, Perry says the cost per mile cost is 4 cents if you figure gas is four bucks a gallon, electricity is 14 cents a kilowatt hour and you drive 15,000 miles a year. Compare that to the 13 cents a mile you'll pay in a car that gets 30 mpg. Perry says the car will cost about 90 cents to charge if you plug it in off-peak.

"The math works even if gas goes down to $1.10 a gallon," he said. "But I don't expect gas to go down to $1.10 a gallon."

UPDATE April 3: As readers have noted, we neglected to mention the work Better Place is doing in Israel, Denmark, Hawaii and elsewhere to create a network of public charging and battery exchange stations. There's much more information about Better Place in the Wired cover story "Driven: Shai Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road."

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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