On January 28th the DOE announced the closing of a $1.4 billion ATVM loan to Nissan North America for the purpose of retooling a factory in Smyrna, Tennessee to produce the Leaf, a zero emission electric car that will be released later this year.
Nissan will use the loan proceeds to create 'up to 1,300 American jobs' at a cost of about $1.3 million each and the 200,000 Leafs it hopes to produce and sell each year will 'conserve up to 65.4 million gallons' of gas, a whopping 327 gallons per car per year. Secretary Chu said, 'This is an investment in our clean energy future. It will bring the United States closer to reducing our dependence on foreign oil and help lower carbon pollution.' I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
With due respect to Nissan and its PR team, no electric car can honestly claim zero emissions because unless they're sold in a bundle with a wind turbine or solar panel, the best any electric car can do is take distributed CO2 emissions from the roads and centralize them in a coal or gas fired power plant. Even under the most optimistic of renewable energy scenarios, American EVs will be plugging into a lump of coal for decades. I'm the first to point out that the Leaf will be responsible for a little less than half the CO2 a comparably sized car with an internal combustion engine would produce, but calling the Leaf 'zero emission' has all the intellectual integrity of a no-peeing section in the public swimming pool.
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