Nissan Leaf drives into Sim City

Nissan and Electronic Arts are bringing a little more reality to EA's most recent edition of its popular city-building franchise, Sim City: now players can green-up their cities by driving Leafs and installing up to five Nissan-branded charging stations for free. Leaf is the only electric vehicle currently available in the game.

As an incentive to develop infrastructure, buildings in a player's city will experience a one-time wave of happiness, one of the key reward mechanisms in the game. Once the charging stations are installed, Leafs will begin to populate the city and players can see the EV smiles on their Sims' faces as they drive around. Nissan's online calculator will tell them how Leaf happiness translates into real-life savings through the Nissan website.

"Even virtual cities recognize that electric vehicles are the future of a sustainable mobile society, and Nissan is excited to start helping SimCity players make their cities more environmentally friendly by adding its zero-emission Nissan LEAF to the game," said Jon Brancheau, vice-president, marketing, Nissan North America, Inc. "Nissan remains committed to finding innovative ways to promote the development of EV infrastructure and to bringing practical, affordable electric vehicles to markets throughout the United States."

Sim City has gained more than 30 million fans since its debut in 1989, and sold more than 1.3 million copies since its return to PC last month. The game debuts on Mac in June. The Nissan Green Program has been ecognized as an Energy Star partner of the year for the last three years by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.