It is easy to be disillusioned about the motor industry, especially after reading the remarks of GM’s Bob Lutz calling Global Warming a “Total crock of shi*t”!
However, an interview in The Economist recently with Renault-Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn was very heartening. Mr. Ghosn plans that Renault and Nissan will lead the car industry in developing profitable zero-emission vehicles.
In fact, according to the article:
Nissan plans to launch a battery-powered car in America in 2010 and by 2012 the Renault-Nissan alliance will offer a complete range of electric vehicles in every large car-market. And these new battery-powered cars, it claims, will work out less expensive than equivalent petrol models.
Now that is the kind of bold leadership the industry needs. I’m currently in the market for a new car and I’m very disappointed at the lack of any really Green automobile. If mr. Ghosn had one of his all-electric cars on the market today, I’d be lining up to buy it.
And I suspect I’m not the only one.
2 Comments
Hi Tom,
I agree with your sentiments. I drive a Prius but it still produces > 100 grams of CO2 per km. Our second car is a Cireon. Ideally we would like a plug in hybrid electric for long journers and a pure electric for dropping the kids to school. With demand response technology to charge these cars we would be running on a very large percentage of renewable energy. We are not going to buy new cars until something more ecologically sound is available.
There are two good reasons for not buying cars at the moment. Given that there will be a huge change in technology over the next five years it is a good thing to let our car population age so that we can adopt the new technologies faster. And, secondly, if the car companies see a drop in sales as people wait for newer greener models
then this will accelerate their development.
The greatest technological barrier remains the low energy density of batteries.
In all fairness to GM, I think they have plans to move toward electric vehicles.
Personally, I think BMWs recent marketing campaigh around ‘Efficient Dynamics’ is just that; a marketing campaign. When will they bring a hybrid or plug in hybrid electic vehicle (PHEV) to market?
Jerry,
I with you. I need to buy a car at the moment only because I am moving to Spain and will need one there.
Otherwise I’d hold off until there were a decent zero emissions option available.