Green Options

Editor’s Note: This is part four of an exclusive sit down I had with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, at last week’s U.S. debut of the LEAF in Los Angeles. Part one is devoted to battery swapping, part two to battery leasing, and part three to the quietness and safety of EVs.

During the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, Renault invited Gas 2.0’s own UK-based Chris Milton to an exclusive event detailing the company’s electric car strategy. The event introduced some rather quirky (and quirkily named) electric cars, including the Twizy, the Kangoo, and the Zoe. These aren’t just concept cars, they are cars that Renault intends to build and sell—some by next year.

Based on those releases—and the fact that Nissan hasn’t invested anything in battery swapping while Renault has jumped in head first—it started to seem that the Renault-Nissan Alliance was taking two completely different paths on the road to EV world domination. On the one hand you have Nissan with the rather mainstream-looking LEAF and plans for a luxury Infiniti electric car. And on the other you have… the Twizy.

In my recent sit down with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, I asked him to explain why Nissan and Renault were apparently moving in opposite directions.

Editor’s Note: This is part three of an exclusive sit down I had with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, at last week’s U.S. debut of the LEAF in Los Angeles. Part one is devoted to battery swapping, part two to battery leasing, and part four to the different zero emissions directions of Renault and Nissan within their alliance.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn made it a point to highlight how quiet the upcoming Nissan LEAF electric car will be during an event in Los Angeles last week to mark the car’s U.S. debut. “LEAF has no engine, no tailpipe, no fuel tanks,” he remarked. “As a result LEAF has zero carbon emissions, zero particle [emissions] and zero noise. It’s quiet and clean.”

The gathering crowd of electric car makers has been drumming this “quiet mantra” since day one, and, indeed, it is certainly a great selling point. But recently the quietness of EVs has come under scrutiny as a potential safety hazard to the blind, the elderly, and children; if you can’t hear the car, it’s one less warning you have of an impending accident.

Editor’s Note: This is part two of an exclusive sit down I had with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, at last week’s U.S. debut of the LEAF in Los Angeles. Part one is devoted to battery swapping, part three to the quietness and safety of EVs, and part four to the different zero emissions directions of Renault and Nissan within their alliance.

As the Nissan LEAF nears its release to the consumer market, the topic of whether or not the battery will be leased or purchased with the car has come to the forefront. In many ways, Nissan has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the topic—leading to confusion among the media and potential customers about what, exactly, Nissan is planning.

In truth, Nissan hasn’t done the best job of presenting a clear picture of the topic. So I was surprised when, at last week’s U.S. LEAF unveiling, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn made the most definitive statement I’d heard on the subject to date: “The battery will not be sold, it will be leased, and the lease will be calculated in such a way that for the average U.S. citizen—which today drives between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand miles per year—the cost of the lease of the battery plus the cost of electricity is lower than the cost of gasoline.”

As expected, many in the media latched on to this statement as the final say on whether or not the LEAF battery will be leased, but based on Nissan’s past experience with this topic, I had a hunch that wasn’t really the full story. So I asked Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, to elaborate.

Editor’s Note: This is part one of an exclusive sit down I had with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, at last week’s U.S. debut of the LEAF in Los Angeles. Part two is devoted battery leasing, part three to the quietness and safety of EVs, and part four to the different zero emissions directions of Renault and Nissan within their alliance.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance’s strategy regarding battery swapping has been somewhat unclear to the public as of late. On the one hand, Renault has partnered with battery swapping stars Better Place in such countries as Israel, Denmark and France to develop a purpose built car for those battery swapping markets. On the other hand, Nissan has ignored many other potential battery swapping markets, such as the U.S., and has remained quite non-committal in those areas.

In a rather open conversation with me, Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of the Global Zero Emission Business Unit, explained why.

At this point, most of us have heard of Better Place and their battery swap station idea, but they aren’t the only ones who’ve though of such a thing. NuTech, a company I recently discovered at the Alt Car Expo in Santa Monica, CA, has developed their own take on the concept of drive-thru battery swap stations… only theirs is portable.

The Australian government has given the green light to a plan to establish one of the world’s largest electric car recharging infrastructures, powered entirely by renewable energy.