Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said he isn't worried that the company's new car will face stiff competition from hybrid cars offered by rival companies.
YOKOHAMA, Japan -- Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said Sunday he isn't worried that the company's new electric vehicle will face stiff competition from hybrid cars offered by rival companies.
Nissan, at the opening ceremony for its new headquarters in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, unveiled the commercial model of its new electric car named Nissan Leaf, which will be launched in late 2010 in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
Japan's third-biggest car maker by sales volume will roll out the zero-emission car at a time when its rivals are also increasing efforts to offer environmentally friendly cars, as emission regulations are becoming stricter and oil prices are also rallying back.
Nissan's domestic competitors, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., earlier this year released their latest hybrid cars: Toyota's remodeled Prius and Honda's redesigned Insight. Those affordable hybrid models attract customers looking to reduce spending on fuel and the two companies are scrambling to increase production of their hybrids to meet brisk demand for the latest models.
Nissan plans to offer Nissan Leaf at an affordable price, which it has yet to disclose. Its low-price electric car could compete with the Prius, the Insight or other hybrid cars. But Mr. Ghosn said that is unlikely to happen, maintaining that because electric cars emit no carbon dioxide, they are separate and distinct from hybrid cars and conventional vehicles, which both produce emissions.
"EV is nonsmoking," he said at a meeting with the media after the opening ceremony, calling conventional engines and hybrid cars "smokers" and "low-smokers." He added that hybrid vehicles are competitors to automobiles with conventional engines.
Even as Nissan focuses on electric cars, it also continues to develop and improve internal-combustion-engine technologies to use in hybrid cars and diesel-engine vehicles, Mr. Ghosn said. This is because electric cars are likely to account for 10% of overall global vehicles by 2020, which means the rest of vehicles will remain powered by conventional engines, he said.
source: wsj
