Nissan Motor Co said on Tuesday that the company needs up to 5 years of support from various governments in the form of subsidies to build a sustainable market for electric vehicles.
Nissan, which is introducing its Leaf all-electric car in December, needs government incentives to trigger volume so it can bring down the cost of the car, said Carlos Tavares, Nissan's executive vice president and head of U.S. operations.
"We will need to be supported three to five years," Tavares said in an interview. "We expect that within that time frame we will have enough volume to generate the appropriate cost reduction which will make these subsidies something that we can live without."
U.S. taxpayers who buy electric cars currently qualify for a federal tax credit of $7,500. States, including California, offer additional tax incentives.
The Leaf has a sticker price of $32,780 in the United States. In California, the price of the car comes to about $20,000 including state subsidies.
Nissan, which began taking orders for the Leaf in April, has so far received 17,000 orders in the United States, Tavares said.
Nissan and its French partner Renault SA are the most aggressive proponents of battery-run electric cars, aiming to become the first in the world to sell them in large numbers with a global roll-out of eight models in 2012.
Powered by an electric motor that runs on Nissan's in-house developed lithium-ion batteries, the Leaf runs 100 miles in a single charge.
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