Is U.S. ready to go electric?

On Earth Day, Nissan gave me the opportunity to drive a prototype all-electric vehicle at its American headquarters near Nashville, Tenn., where the car stopped on a multistate tour promoting the Japanese company's plan to introduce its first electric car in the United States in 2010.

But as Nissan and other automakers gear up to produce electric cars, there are hurdles ahead for electric utilities that must provide the power these new vehicles will require in place of the imported oil that runs today's gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and trucks.

One of the biggest challenges to the nation's power grid “is going to be the introduction of electric vehicles,” said Dana Christiansen, associate director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which has partnered with Nissan and the Tennessee Valley Authority, the giant federal power utility, to help develop the charging infrastructure to support the vehicles.

Nissan also has partnerships with utilities in California — the plan calls for the automaker's electric vehicles to be rolled out in Tennessee and California first. When they will be introduced in Texas remains to be determined, but Nissan says it plans to have the cars available nationwide as soon as possible.

TVA and its independent power distributors in the Tennessee Valley are “going to be heavily impacted by the introduction of electric vehicles ... as we add tens of thousands and possibly millions of these vehicles onto our highways,” said Ken Breeden, TVA's executive vice president for customer resources.

Nissan's first electric car will go into corporate and government fleets beginning in late 2010, then will be offered for public use in 2012, said Brian Carolin, senior vice president for sales and marketing at Nissan North America Inc.

Because Nissan is headquartered in Tennessee, that state has agreed to commit to purchasing some of the electric vehicles for its own use as Nissan rolls out the first ones for real-world testing. The state also is helping Nissan by developing the necessary resources to support the vehicles — including charging stations in strategic locations such as downtown areas and mall parking lots.

The car I drove at Nissan's headquarters — an electric-powered version of the new Nissan Cube crossover vehicle — isn't the model the automaker will introduce next year. But it does have the same electric motor and lithium-ion battery system that will power the five-passenger compact car that Nissan will roll out, Carolin said.

Surprisingly, the Nissan vehicle had great pickup, which would make it more appealing to consumers than some electric vehicles already available that are intended for neighborhood use and aren't much more than fancy golf carts.