Nissan And Mitsubishi To Join Forces On Low-Cost Electric Minicar

Mitsubishi was the earliest maker to launch a modern battery-electric small car and sell it in volume, and Nissan has emerged as by far the world's highest-volume seller of electric cars.

Now the two makers have announced they're teaming up to develop an inexpensive electric minicar.

According to Nikkei, it will go into production before the end of March 2017.

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The news answers the question of what will happen to the aging Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric minicar, first introduced in Japan back in 2008 and launched in North America for the 2012 model year.

The i-MiEV itself was briefly the world's best-selling electric car, until the advent of the Nissan Leaf in December 2010, which captured the crown within a matter of months and has never given it back.

Assembling electric cars on three continents and aiming for volumes in the six figures each year, Nissan is determined to become to electric cars what Toyota is to hybrids: the dominant global player.

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