Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, the man who once drove the idea of automotive electrification for the group he ran just a decade ago, has come out to say that now is the time to go all-in on EVs. With this, he has noted some harsh criticisms regarding Nissan’s approach to this.
According to Automotive News, Ghosn said the new players in the industry, such as Tesla and a number of other Chinese challengers, have developed a bit of an advantage over legacy players, and he warned that old-guard companies such as Nissan Motor must be faster to stay competitive in the rapidly shifting landscape.
“The speed of the shift is going to determine who’s going to be the winner,” Ghosn said in an online news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan last week. Here, the ousted motoring veteran spoke on the release of his recent book in a Japanese-translation edition.
Ghosn streamed in from his home in Beirut, where he now lives as an international fugitive following his scandal while running the Renault group. He was indicted four times in Japan on allegations of financial misconduct and fled the country concealed in an oversized music equipment case two years ago this month.
Ghosn, who has maintained his innocence, said that the trend of electric vehicles we have been seeing is indicative of his early desire to make electric vehicles mainstream with the launch of the Nissan Leaf in 2010. Nissan planned to sell hundreds of thousands of EVs over the following years, but demand never materialised.
“When I launched the first mass-market electric car,” Ghosn recalled, “as you know, everybody was laughing at us about, you know, you guys are lost.” But now, he said, as other automakers join the race and plow hundreds of billions of dollars into EVs, the vibe is different.
“When you see the investments being done, I don’t think it’s too much,” he said.
“The market is moving with the right amount of money at the right speed. We’re going 100 per cent electric,” Ghosn said, pointing to the stratospheric market value of Tesla, which eclipsed $1 trillion this year. “The market is telling you we are completely writing off the combustion engine.”
Ghosn added that he does consulting work in electrified mobility from Lebanon.
He added that Chinese entrants especially are betting big on EVs because they are latecomers to the industry and need to invest in the latest, greatest technologies to be competitive against the more established marques.
“The Chinese are going to play beautifully with electrification,” he said.
Ghosn’s upbeat outlook came after Nissan unveiled plans to spend nearly $18 billion to electrify about 50 per cent of its global volume by 2030. But Ghosn said that pace is too slow in comparison to the rest of the automakers.
“They are really in a very bad position in this race,” Ghosn said of Nissan, delivering one of countless potshots during the address. “There is no vision. They don’t know where they’re going. They have no image about this huge technological transformation that is taking place.”
