Renault and Nissan are teaming to promote electric vehicles and electric infrastructure in Portugal. Why Portugal? Who knows, but if the companies succeed in their work there to build an infrastructure model for the rest of the world to follow, we’ll all be much farther along.

The Renault-Nissan team has agreed to trade mass marketing and sales of electric vehicles in Portugal for the government's cooperation with feasibility studies -- a deal they’ve also cut with Israel and Denmark through an organization called Project Better Place. Project Better Place is devoted to making electric vehicles a real option by creating a widespread network of charging stations at which drivers can swap out batteries.

Project Better Place has made inroads into overcoming a significant obstacle to both electric car and biofuel use -- changing urban infrastructure for fueling, whether with cellulosic ethanol or nickel hydride batteries. Distribution is as important to access as manufacturing, and often harder to change. It is exciting to see organizations and countries team up to address this critical issue.

Read more at Greenbiz.com