Mygreenwheels

Guest blog post by Ash Gupta

Following swiftly on the heels of the news that Toyota has taken a $50 million stake in premium EV Roadster maker Tesla, Carlos Ghosn, CEO Nissan spoke out in Detroit yesterday to the city's Economic Club to say that Toyota's example should be followed by the rest of the world auto industry and indicated that this is the way forward. Unlike Honda, Nissan sees up to 10% of its sales coming from electric cars.

Ghosn feels auto makers need to take a three-pronged approach to addressing the new market that is unfolding in the age of mass produced EVs. "One, they need to be in all technologies from electric vehicles to diesel; two, they need to be in emerging markets, especially China, and 3, they need to have vehicles in each segment."  Funny no mention of eco-auto-booming India.

Citroen C-ZeroWell, all predictable motherhood and then, just 24 hours later, London and Bangalore's fave wee EV, the original electric city car, the Reva, known in Britain as the 'G-Wiz' suddenly finds itself 55% owned by Mahindra. So is this the start of a kinda automotive Paul Jones  that Carlos Ghosn foresees? Certainly the gap between the EV believers lead by Nissan and GM and the doubters lead by Honda is widening, but it won't take long to read how the market is shaping once the tasty electric City Car models we have seen in Paris and Geneva hit the show rooms, even if the Citroen C-Zero is really a thinly disguised Mitsubishi i-MiEV! Check the Pininfarina Bo for instance.

Mitsubishi i-MiEVSeen thru a marketing man's eyes, when these sexy cars, buzzing with style, plug-in and internet ready, arrive on the dealer floor we will see the apple iPad effect … and just as it was once cool to sport a Nokia, and it's even cooler now to whip out an ultra fast 3G iPhone, the same will happen up and down the world's auto-dromes. That is why a move announced today from Europe calling for common standards in the design and recharging of electric cars is so timely.

Having lived through the auto-world consolidation of the '70s and '80s, methinks that what's coming next will be just full of strange surprises.  Time will tell.