Gary Lieber, a software product manager who has worked for Apple and Microsoft and participates in the Bay Area group, said members came largely from the computer industry. "They are not afraid to get into the car and poke and prod in areas that until lately have been sealed off," he said. Every meeting has an agenda item about strategies for creating closer ties with Nissan. One early conduit into Nissan was Kim Kinoshita, a member who worked for six years as a consultant to Nissan on its fuel-cell programs in Japan. During those years, Mr. Kinoshita met Nissan engineers working on battery technology, with whom he became friends and stayed in touch. Waidy Lee, an electrical engineer who is a member of Bay Leaf, went to a meeting of the Silicon Valley IEEE, a professional organization for electronics engineers, where she met Koji Doda, an engineer working at the Nissan IT Research Office in Mountain View, Calif. "I said, 'Wow, great,' I have a lot of information for you," Ms. Lee said.