Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn has revealed that the third electric vehicle to join the company’s zero emission fleet will be an all-new model Infiniti.
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The model will ride on an all-new platform and will not be available with conventional petrol or diesel engines. It will be part of a push by Nissan to have 10% of its cars running on electric motors by 2020.
Ghosn added that a fourth model could be something really radical and based on the highly unconventional Land Glider unveiled at the Tokyo show this week.
It has four wheels like a car but rides like a motorbike and tilts on the bends. The Land Glider was described by Ghosn as the ideal city car, easy to park and combining the best of two- and four-wheel worlds.
Colin Dodge, who heads up Nissan’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa said that the Land Glider could be a production reality and the company is looking at how such a radical vehicle could fit with homologation and crash testing requirements.
“I believe there is a market in Europe for this type of vehicle,” he added.
Infiniti, originally for the US market, has been rolled out across Europe over the past two years and is just launching in UK. It has suffered from the lack of a diesel engine, however this will be rectified next year with the arrival of a V6 diesel.
Andy Palmer, Nissan’s senior vice-president with responsibility for zero emission vehicles said that an Infiniti EV is designed to increase the brand’s attractiveness outside the US market.
Nissan publicly unveiled its first EVs at Tokyo, including the Leaf which goes onto the market next year and into mass production in 2012. The second model is a light commercial vehicle based on the NV200.
Ghosn said at the show: “The race for zero emissions has begun. The world has to address the issue of CO2. Nissan is already taking steps, not only with the introduction of EVs, but by developing more efficient gasoline engines, cleaner diesels and hybrid vehicles.
“These can contain the CO2 problem but it will not make it disappear. The solution lies in zero emission mobility at a price people can afford.”
Nissan’s aim, he added, was to make the purchase price of EVs equal to conventional internal combustion engines.
