Cars

We have yet to launch them in the showrooms but our electric cars are already winning awards.

The Alliance EVs are the editor’s choice in this year’s Green Awards run by What Car?, the leading UK consumer motoring magazine.

The Editor’s Award is made by magazine chief Steve Fowler who said: “The electric car has come of age – and that’s down to the Renault-Nissan Alliance. While other manufacturers are still making plans and running trials, Renault and Nissan have beaten them to the punch with proper electric cars you’ll actually be able to buy and run by this time next year. You’ll want one, too."

Fowler added that cars such as the Nissan Leaf and Renault Fluence will change people’s perceptions of electric motoring for good.

Renault might not be the first car manufacturer to market electric cars, as Fluence ZE and Kangoo ZE will hit the road mid 2011, but in order to give a flavour of those exciting models, a lot of pre series cars will be seen on European roads this year.

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.