Nissan never really joined in the battle to build America’s next-generation car.
While some automakers in recent years rolled out multiple alternative-fuel, environmentally friendly cars and SUVs, Nissan offered consumers in only some states the Altima Hybrid, a gas-electric vehicle.
With its North American headquarters in Franklin, Tenn., Nissan took a different route. Company executives never were sold on the theory that emissions-reducing hybrids are a long-term solution to pollution issues, believing instead they are an intermittent option.
So while most automakers rolled out one hybrid after another, Nissan was working behind the scenes on something different – an electric vehicle that uses no gas and produces no emissions. In business lingo, such strategy is known as placing a big bet.
In Nissan’s case, it was a very big bet in that the company was conspicuously absent from the hybrid category.