Demand for electric vehicles in the US will far exceed current forecasts, Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault told an audience of environmentalists, government regulators and media in Los Angeles where he kicked off a 12-month tour by the Leaf prototype.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
“You’ll have much more than 1 million cars by 2015,” Ghosn said. “The response will be bigger than we think,” he said, referring to the goal set by President Barack Obama earlier this year.
Ghosn predicted that mass-market sales will spur advances in battery technology, which will in turn stimulate more sales and bring down vehicle costs.
The Leaf goes on sale a year from now and Ghosn said its price would be within “1 or 2 percent” of the cost of competing non-electric cars. One issue still to be resolved is whether the battery pack is sold as part of the car or leased by customers. “We want to lease the battery. We don’t want to sell the battery,” Ghosn said.
Leasing it would allow customers to upgrade their batteries during the life of the car.
The prototype Leaf embarks on a 22-city, 11-state US tour where it will be displayed in college campuses, shopping malls and government offices. The tour is aimed at changing people’s perspective of EVs, said Ghosn.
The Leaf will be built at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tennessee, factory at an annual rate of 150,000 units. Nissan is also installing a new lithium-ion battery plant at Smyrna as part of a US$2bn project there.
Ghosn said that both Nissan and Renault will have four electric vehicles each, including a small commercial vehicle, and the two companies would have the capacity globally to build 500,000 EVs and batteries a year.
