‘They don’t make any noise, they have zero emissions and they’ll free our nations from oil addiction’, said the Prime-Minister. ‘These are the three reasons why I’ve always wanted to put Portugal in the forefront of the electric car, a vehicle that will change our cities and Europe’s transportation networks’, he added.
Mr. Sócrates also pointed that only with serious incentives European governments can promote public acceptance of the electric vehicle. ‘It shouldn’t be a thing just for three huggers’, the Prime-Minister joked.
The Leaf is going on sale in Portugal in 2011 with an estimated price of 30,000 euros, tax discount and state incentives included.
In the same ceremony, in Lisbon, Nissan’s vice-president Carlos Tavares told the media that ‘electric vehicles are vital for the future of the auto industry’, as well as ‘one of the answers to climate change’.
At the end of the ceremony, the Portuguese Prime-Minister drove off in the Government’s Nissan Leaf, one of the ten first such models being delivered in Europe.
The other nine Leafs were bought by the consortium behind Mobi.e, Portugal’s national electric mobility program. The Mobi.e concept has already been exported to Malta and Portugal is in talks with several other countries to implement its mobility project abroad.
