Nissan has not done so well since then, although it remains one of the more profitable of the world’s car makers. The last three-year plan called Value-Up called for annual sales to reach 4.2 million vehicles by 2007, when reality was 3.77 million. Ghosn’s high ambitions for Renault are also proving difficult to achieve.

Now he has announced the next five-year programme, GT 2012.

Ghosn is confident that Nissan’s future progress will come from innovation: ‘The period of revival and retooling of the past eight years is over. We have made massive investment, renewed everything: it’s done. Nissan lost its way with technology in the 1990s and became disconnected from what the consumer wanted. Now we have reconnected.’

Connection is the essential element of the electric car programme which Ghosn regards as the most important development in today’s automotive world under environmental pressure and facing ever-increasing cost of oil.

He said recently: ‘There is a shift taking place. It is not obvious now, but in a couple of years the pressure will be on to have zero- emissions cars. The rising cost of energy is unstoppable and carbon dioxide emissions will have to cut, out of respect for the environment. We tried electric cars 15 years ago and they were not successful. But then the environment was not an issue. Now, especially with the younger generation, it is cool to be environmental.’

Nissan is sharing its electric car expertise with its partner Renault. It has linked with a US company called Project Better Place, run by Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, to set up networks of roadside stations where the cars can be plugged in to recharge their batteries. So far, Israel and Denmark have signed up with Project Better Place, and both expect to have the infrastructure in place by 2011.

Ghosn points out that governments need to provide tax breaks for users to encourage the widespread use of electric cars and sees these first two national projects as a pattern for the future: ‘Governments are ready to incentivize zero emissions cars and the more that do, the more will follow.’

Ghosn says that Renault-Nissan has received a serious enquiry from one of the Gulf states, but he won’t say which one.

Elsewhere, the first plug-in Nissans will be sold to businesses and fleets in the US and Japan from 2010 and will be available in the mass market by 2012.

Nissan and Renault will offer a range of electric vehicles that will be sold at prices equivalent to today’s gasoline or diesel-engined models.

Batteries will not be included. The lithium-ion batteries that will give the cars a range of up to 150 km will be leased separately.

The lease price has not been specified but Ghosn anticipates that where a charging infrastructure exists there could be arrangements like mobile phone agreements where the batteries are provided free if the car owner signs up for a certain time or frequency of use of the charging stations.

The proposition is that the battery pack plus the cost of charging has to be cheaper than gasoline required for the same use. So the more the price of oil rises, the better the prospects for the electric car.

Ghosn is clear: ‘Batteries are the key technology in the future of the automobile’. The latest laminated lithium-ion batteries that the electric Nissans and Renaults will use were developed in conjunction with Japanese electronics company NEC. The joint company, called Automotive Energy Supply Corporation, is based in a Nissan factory in Japan.

Ghosn does not reject the General Motors E-Flex idea for a hybrid that is an electric car with a combustion engine as a range extender but does not think it should be the main technology for the future: ‘Because a car like that is not zero emissions’.

Nissan is proud to claim leadership in pure electric cars. And it wants to keep it. Although it has recently engaged in a variety of supply deals with other car makers, it is not proposing to share the electric car technology outside its alliance with Renault.

Image Gallery