Nissan's zippy electric car should generate lots of buyers

— -- Nissan plucked a prototype of its electric car from a demonstration for Washington, D.C., bigwigs and brought it to USA TODAY Wednesday for a runaround.

The body and interior are not at all like the production version. That'll be a four-door, front-wheel-drive hatchback that can hold four or five passengers. But the battery pack and electric motor in the prototype are the same that'll be in the small car, which will start down the assembly line in fall 2010 in Japan.

And when you get to drive a car this far ahead of time — one that the automaker says is "90% there" in performance — how can you not drive and dish?

The still-unnamed Nissan electric, like the Chevrolet Volt electric reviewed last Friday, was a mule: a body from a car about the right size snugged over the correct running gear and chassis. Nissan is using the body of a previous-generation Cube, a small car for the Japan market.

Short version: quick, creamy, quiet. At least as good as the Volt mule, which was quite good, in those important drivability aspects.

Nissan is short on specifics. We don't know, for instance, the capacity of the lithium-ion battery pack, which runs down the center under the floorboards. It'll be at least a 16-kilowatt-hour pack. Nissan promises the car will qualify for the $7,500 U.S. federal tax credit, and that requires 16kWh. Volt's pack is 16kWh.

The motor was right-by-gosh-now powerful, which is typical of electrics. Unlike gasoline engines, electrics deliver all their torque the moment they begin to turn. No need to rev.

Here's a bet: Americans in urban or busy suburban areas will fall in love with electrics' instant response. Hole in traffic? You're there.

The Nissan felt quicker than Volt. But there was no side-by-side comparison or stopwatch, so that's totally seat-of-the-pants.

Nissan engineers differ considerably from rivals on how to tune the regenerative braking. Regen braking is the system that turns the electric motor into a generator on deceleration and throws some juice back into the battery pack.