Reliant Energy to Help Nissan Leaf’s Marketing Campaign

Nissan is about to get some help with its upcoming launch of all-electric car Leaf. The CEO of one of America’s biggest electric utility companies decided to help with Nissan’s North America's launch campaign for its new Leaf. The electric company decided to send all of its customers marketing materials along with their monthly electricity bill.

"I think we can play a role in what Nissan is doing," said David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy Inc. of Princeton, N.J., which provides electricity in cities around the country. "We send monthly statements out to 1.5 million customers in the Houston area," he told Automotive News. "That's a lot of marketing potential." Houston is a very important market for Nissan and NRG owns the Houston power company, Reliant Energy

Mr Crane wants Reliant to be Nissan’s service supplier in Houston, which practically means that when a customer buys an electric vehicle, he could also buy a Reliant charger installation from the Nissan dealer. And you can get finance for the whole package. So once you bought the car, some nice people from the electric company can come and install the necessary equipment for recharging.

Another one of Crane’s ideas is to sell people recharging plans, just like cell phone plans, so they will pay according to their needs. "We could have different plans available, depending on the customer's needs," he said. "It might guarantee you so many recharges a month at public stations or give you so many charges a month on a rapid-charge system."

Using an electric vehicle charger takes up to six hours to fully recharge the battery, but installing a more expensive charging system could reduce the time at less than an hour.