Mashable post
http://mashable.com/2010/12/08/nissan-car-modern/
Nissan Wants to Make the Car Modern Again
Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of automobile giants Renault and Nissan, says that the automobile industry has failed for decades to innovate, but that the electric car is the breakthrough that will bring the motor vehicle into the modern age.
During his keynote at the LeWeb conference in Paris, Ghosn explained that “cars have stopped being perceived as symbols of modernity.” He stated that automobiles rank 17th in interest in Japan, easily beaten by cellphones, computers and video games.
The reason for this, he says, is due to the auto industry’s choice to focus on optimization over innovation. Optimization is all about reducing risk, while innovation is about increasing it in order to achieve the breakthrough that will push a business to the next level. Ghosn claims that there have been no real breakthroughs in the auto industry in the past few decades. He also says that hybrids are not a breakthrough, but an optimization.
And while the automobile has stagnated, the world has dramatically changed. Nissan and Renault’s CEO says that severe action has to be taken to stop an environmental catastrophe, and that cars have clearly contributed to our environmental problems. The rising price of energy, especially oil and gasoline, is also making it necessary to rethink the machines that 1 billion people drive every single day around the world.
That’s why he’s placing a big bet on the electric car. Ghosn believes that the world needs a mass-produceable, affordable and zero-emission pure electric car that can help relieve us of the environmental and energy issues that plague our world. He was quick to promote the Nissan Leaf, the company’s compact battery electric car that he says is already sold out in Japan for 2011.
He noted that there is a lot of skepticism of electric cars in general, especially surrounding their range and that the battery is not safe. He responded by saying that innovation is what will reconstruct the future, and that the electric car is the innovation that the industry needs to reclaim its modernity.
