Carlos Ghosn, Plugged-In

Posted by: Carol Matlack on May 02

Running a car company isn’t always hard work. Taking a break from a meeting with journalists in a Portuguese resort, Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn hopped behind the wheel of a silver Nissan 350Z convertible and zoomed off for a drive along the rocky coastline west of Lisbon.

But it was electric cars, not sportscars, that Ghosn seemed most excited about during the meeting in the town of Cascais on May 1 and 2. By 2010, Nissan expects to roll out the first in a new line of all-electric cars. Unlike past electric vehicles, with their clunky batteries and under-powered engines, Ghosn promises that these cars will not only be 100% emissions-free, but also easy and fun to drive. “We’re going to make a sexy car, [with] attractive design and good driving performance,” he says.

While the company hasn’t announced prices yet, Ghosn says the cost of owning and operating an electric car will be no more than for a conventional vehicle, in an era when oil prices are likely to stay well above $100 a barrel.

Nissan’s car, the product of more than 15 years’ research, will run on a lithium-ion battery about the size of a small portable computer. It stores enough juice to drive an ordinary sedan only about 100 miles. But Ghosn says that some 10 million of the 69 million cars sold worldwide each year are used mainly for driving relatively short distances in and around big cities, making electric cars a sensible alternative.

The battery can be recharged in about two hours--far less time than earlier models--so a driver could recharge it during the day in a parking garage or a streetside plug-in spot. Few such plug-in facilities exist now, but authorities in congested European cities such as London and Paris are considering them as a way to reduce auto pollution.

Nissan already has signed deals in Israel and Denmark calling for an even more-innovative solution: Working with local partners, Nissan will set up a network of battery-exchange stations where drivers can stop in and swap their batteries for freshly-charged ones, in about the time it would take to fill up a tank of gas. In such cases, Nissan would own the batteries and lease them to drivers. “It’s a change of the business model,” Ghosn says, with Nissan and its partners reaping revenue that earlier would have gone to the oil companies.

Nissan has set up a joint venture with NEC of Japan to manufacture the batteries. It’s also likely that French automaker Renault will get in on the act, building its own line of electric cars that would be powered by Nissan-NEC batteries. Renault and Nissan have a global alliance, and Ghosn is CEO of both companies.

Of course, Nissan isn’t the only automaker with an electric car in the works. General Motors Corp. also has targeted a 2010 launch for its planned Volt electric model, which would use a small gasoline-powered auxiliary engine to recharge the battery as the car runs. While a Volt-style car wouldn’t be 100% emissions-free, it might be a more workable solution in U.S. cities, where the logistics of setting up plug-in spots or battery-exchange stations could be more complicated, admits Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Nissan’s research and development chief.

Nissan says it will offer its new electric car to vehicle fleet owners in the U.S. and Japan starting in 2010, and will begin mass-marketing it in those countries and in Europe by 2012. Initially, it will target relatively wealthy countries, because the sticker price will be too high for most customers in emerging markets.

But Ghosn is convinced that drivers worldwide are ready to embrace electric cars. Many young drivers see environmentally-friendly cars as “cool,” he says. “The technology is here,” he says, “and it is a technology we want to own.”