Ghosn hat schon öfter durchblicken lassen, Vorstellung erst kurz bevor die Produktion beginnt sonst kriegt man die aktuellen Fahrzeuge nicht mehr los. In Europa verkaufen sich Zoe & Leaf noch sehr gut und in Japan hat Nissan in zwei Monaten so viel verkauft wie in 6 Monaten zuvor nicht.
Interview Ghosn Auto China 2016
Transcript from a media round table session with Carlos Ghosn at Auto China 2016
Q6: on market share of electric cars
Ghosn: First let me assure you that I don't forget any one of the questions please, keep that in mind. The first one is yes, we are disappointed. We are a promoter of electric cars, we are, we were the first one in 2006 to go the electric car has a future in this industry and we were the only one, the only one, okay. Nissan and Renault took the lead on electric cars in 2006, we announced it, we told you what we were going to do and we are moving with the electric car. At that moment there is nobody coming with electric car, now everybody is coming with electric car, that's fact. In Europe in 2015 Renault and Nissan had more than 50 percent market share of electric share. Good, the European market is growing and both Zoe and Leaf are leading, good, this is fair. In the United States we are moving ahead, we are facing some headwinds but we are coming with higher range cars because the range is an issue, there is competition coming from General Motors and from Tesla, good. In China we brought the car but we are not selling it and we're not selling it because we are being told that it is too expensive and the range is maybe not as big as the consumer wants.
So what's selling? We look at what are the electric cars that are selling in China and the electric cars that are selling are 25 percent lower POC price than the Venucia and with the range that is higher than the Venucia. So we have to be very clear, we need to lower the price and increase the range. We know how to do that, it is going to take a little bit of time but we know how to do it but at the same time what is really evolving are the cheap electric cars and this is where we have no offer and this is where we need to develop an offer. So I don't want you to have the impression that we have a car and it's okay, we said we are not selling it and it's a problem. No, we need to follow the market, not only the market follows us but we need to follow the market so our strategy in China is going to be first adapt our product to the market needs but at the same time come with other products that is really selling today in China. So I cannot tell you I am happy with the sales of Venucia electric, I'm not but at the same time that's not sufficient, what is important is what are the root causes, why are we not selling this car, what should we do in order to sell this car and what are the Chinese consumers buying in terms of electric cars? I am convinced that China will be a very large electric car market, not hybrid, electric because the Chinese government has been very clear in supporting zero emissions and putting a lot of incentives behind electric cars. So we have a very clear signal from the Chinese government that they want electric cars and they want the development of electric cars so we are going to follow and we are going to contribute.
Q7 On launching new cars:
Ghosn: First obviously we have many products coming but we we're not ready to talk about them because what we want today is to sell the products we have. If we start talking about the products coming in the future somehow it always handicaps the sales of today. Tesla has not this problem because they launched Tesla Model 3 which is a completely new car so even though they announce it today and it will be selling one year and a half down the road, it is not replacing any existing product so there is no impact on that, okay. We have to be more careful because today we are selling electric cars and even though we want to continue to promote these cars I don't want you to think these are the only cars we are going to be launching on the market. There is going to be a lot of innovation coming from Nissan and Renault and we are intending to compete against all the other car makers on electric cars. So I don't want you to think that what you are seeing today is everything you are going to see from us, we are watching competition, we are measuring what they will be coming with and we will be more than happy to show you the capability in terms of electric cars coming from both Nissan and Renault.
...So what I want to say is yes, you're right, SUV is mainly market driven, consumer driven. EVs are going to be heavily supported by government at the beginning but wait a second, when costs are going to go down, batteries are becoming more efficient and infrastructure is going to be stronger, we are going to see a surge of EV. Where is this surge? Well we've seen it in the orders, the huge orders that Tesla has been having. It looks like when you cross the 300 kilometres range and you go below $35,000 price and you have a sleek design, you start to be extremely interesting for the consumer but it has to have from the beginning strong support from the government...