Cheap electric cars, hybrids, and other alternative fuel environmentally friendly vehicles have not been a large part of Nissan's repertoire: until now. Nissan in recent years has fallen behind Toyota and Honda in popular gas-electric hybrids and plans to make up for lost time. Recently the automaker announced that it will be presenting for global distribution in 2012 a plug-in electric car, priced around $10,000.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who does not have the reputation for taking business risks, is wagering that his decision to engineer an entirely new EV platform and build battery plants in Europe, North America and Asia costing hundreds of millions of dollars will make electric car news by forging a path toward an all-electric future for the auto industry.

Ghosn predicts that studies performed by MIT in which annual sales of electric cars worldwide will exceed 10 million by 2016 will accurately reflect the future. J.D. Powers and other business forecasters estimate a result of about one-twentieth of CEO Ghosn's prediction. For such a gamble to pay off for Nissan, millions of new car buyers will have to instantly switch their allegiance away from the combustion engine by shopping for cheap electric car quotes at a rate comparable to mass hysteria.