Tuesday June 23, 2009

Nissan snubs hybrids, to build over 100000 electric cars per year from 2012

reuters.com :

Nissan has sought to knock down the hybrid hype. "We do not put electric cars and hybrids in the same category," Nissan CEO Ghosn told shareholders. "Hybrids are fuel-efficient technology. EV's are no fuel. Hybrids are an optimisation of combustion engines. EV's have none. Hybrids reduce emissions by 20-30%. EV's have none."

Ghosn stressed that Nissan and Renault were the only carmakers with a mass-volume EV strategy to date, saying he was optimistic that they would proliferate with crude oil prices at $67 a barrel even in a global recession. Nissan and Renault are due to launch 3 electric cars each by 2012. Nissan will build more than 100,000 electric vehicles a year when it starts US production of the zero-emission vehicles at its Smyrna, Tennessee plant in 2-3 years.

- One has to be careful about taking Nissan's statements at face value. The point being, Nissan has completely missed two, and now coming to three entire generations of hybrid car technology and is now trying to play catch-up to its larger rivals Toyota and Honda. Nissan is a little late to that particular game, some 10-15 years after the two pioneering car-makers initiated their hybrid programs, hence it is no wonder that Nissan is pooh-poohing hybrid vehicles.

On the other hand, it will be interesting to see how the battle for the next-generation of green vehicles shapes up. Of course, at the higher end of the market there are models such as the Tesla Roadster and the Tesla Model S, but if we are talking about family cars that ordinary people would actually buy, we would be talking about the mass production models. In this mass market segment, it is starting to look like a three-way race between the likes of Toyota and Honda with their solidly practical though evolutionary subsequent iterations of their hybrid car models, Nissan and Renault with their electric car designs, and GM-Chevrolet, if they still feel up to the task, with their Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid.

See also :

1. Nissan, NEC to make hybrid batteries
2. Nissan, NEC to mass produce lithium-ion batteries for cars
3. Nissan starts PHEV plug-in hybrid development, to introduce electric car concept at 2008 Paris Motor show

(2009-06-23 20:53:13 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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