COMMITMENT is one of Carlos Ghosn's favourite words. He makes commitments himself and he expects his senior managers in the Renault-Nissan alliance to do the same. His latest, and one of his boldest, is that Renault and Nissan will lead the car industry in developing profitable zero-emission vehicles.
In recent months Renault-Nissan has teamed up with Project Better Place, a Silicon Valley start-up, to introduce all-electric vehicles and a network of charging points in Israel and Denmark by 2011. Now Nissan is going further. Speaking at a media event in Portugal this week, Mr Ghosn said that the time for the mass-market zero-emission car has come. 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.
Would you be interested in converting your existing car into a plug-in hybrid? A Connecticut start-up claims it is developing a system that will do just that -- for a little under $4,000.
Autoblog Green says that Poulsen Hybrid's "general idea is to take an existing ICE car and convert it to a plug-in electric hybrid with mileage in the 100 mpg range. The system adds two Poulsen Hybrid electric motors that use rare earth permanent magnets and are rated at 5kW or 7hp onto the outside of your car and then adds a 72V 120Ah Deep Cycle Lead Acid battery pack (with six batteries inside) and an onboard charger to the vehicle."
BMW may have just internationally unveiled its crossover off-roader/coupe, the X6, but there's an even more exotic version heading our way.
The company confirmed last year that the new X6 (pictured) would be the model to debut its hybrid technology. At the launch of the X6, BMW remained tight-lipped about the hybrid model but Drive has learned it will use an electric motor combined with the 4.4-litre, V8 petrol engine.
The United States can slash its use of petroleum dramatically by 2035 by adding a heavy dose of hybrids to the market, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
To return U.S. fuel use to pre-2000 levels, however, carmakers would have to improve efficiency and consumers would have to learn to love hybrids, trading features like increased speed and size for higher fuel efficiency.
