Add Singapore to the ever-growing list of governments pledging to work with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to bring electric cars and charging infrastructure to its roadways.
The Southeast Asian island nation announced Thursday that it will "explore the development" of an electric vehicle program with the Franco-Japanese auto making alliance.
With 3.75 million people living in a landmass of only 253 square miles, Singapore seems a natural for electric transportation. But the alliance's partnerships extend across the world – though, of course, deals on paper have yet to lead to electric vehicle charging stations on the ground.
Singapore joins a club that now includes 26 governments and other entities working with Renault-Nissan, including China, Ireland, Israel, Denmark, Portugal, Monaco, and Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan, among others (see Green Light post and Ireland Inks EV Deal With Renault-Nissan).
In the United States, the alliance is working with the states of Oregon and Tennessee and the cities of Seattle, San Diego, Raleigh, N.C. as well as Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona. It is working with ECOtality on those Arizona projects (see Green Light post).
The EV charging-government partnerships are happening almost too fast and furiously to count nowadays.
Palo Alto car battery swapping station startup Better Place, for one, has deals with Denmark, Australia, Canada, Hawaii, Israel and California's Bay Area (see Green Light post and Better Place Grabs €103 million, Names New Danish CEO). It is working with Nissan in Israel.
Campbell, Calif. startup Coulomb Technologies, on the other hand, has installed a small number of charging stations in San Francisco and San Jose, and has ambitions of building a network in California (see Green Light post and Coulomb Bags $3.75M for Electric-Car Charging).
That's despite the fact that no major automaker has yet begun to mass-produce vehicles that can use these charging or battery-swapping stations. But then, setting up stations that allow faster recharge times is considered a critical step in making electric vehicles attractive to consumers.
Toyota plans to make about 500 of its new plug-in Prius hybrids available to fleet customers this year, and General Motors plans to start selling its plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt next year (see Toyota to Build All-Electric Car by 2012).
Mitsubishi plans to launch its all-electric MiEV in Japan this summer and at an unspecified later date in the United States, and it is working with the city of Portland, Ore. On plans for a charging station network (see Green Light post).
And Nissan plans to start selling its all-electric EV-02 in the United States next year (see Under the Hood With Nissan's Electric Car).