China, Nissan Strike Electric Car Deal

China has tapped Nissan to set up an electric-car program in the city of Wuhan, relying on the automaker to set up a fleet of electric vehicles and charging stations, the Wall Street Journal reports. Beijing plans to produce 500,000 “new energy” vehicles by 2011, and recently selected 13 cities—including Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing—to collectively put 60,000 such vehicles on the road within four years.

For its part, Nissan is planning to roll out a compact-battery, all-electric car to corporate-fleet customers in the US and Japan next year. That same car will come to China in 2011 and Nissan is considering building the entire car, batteries included, in China in the future. Some automakers think 20% of China’s passenger-car sales will come from new-energy cars by 2020.
(More China stories.)