Renault-Nissan Alliance CEO Carlos Ghosn doesn’t expect the majority of consumers to give up on buying cars in the next five to 10 years, despite advances in vehicle automation and the continued growth of ride-sharing and ride-hailing services.
“Car ownership is not only a rational decision; it’s also an emotional decision,” he told a crowd of reporters at an event in the SLS Las Vegas hotel and casino during the 2017 CES technology show. Buying a car, Ghosn explained, “is midway between buying a refrigerator and buying a dog. You buy a dog because you like the dog . . . a refrigerator is much more rational.” For that reason, Ghosn predicted, automated cars will need to appeal to buyers’ emotions, because they will be investing in both a mode of transportation and a “personal mobile space.”
Personal mobility was a key theme among automakers at CES, and it has been a thread that automakers followed to the Detroit auto show a week later, where Ghosn again delivered a keynote speech at the show’s Automobili-D offshoot focusing on mobility tech.
In Las Vegas, Ghosn declared that his company will continue to work with Microsoft on connected-car technologies, including the possibility of integrating Cortana, Microsoft’s personal assistant, into future Nissan vehicles. And he announced that the next-generation Nissan Leaf will come to market with the brand’s ProPilot technology, which will allow the redesigned electric vehicle to engage in automated single-lane highway driving. Users will be able to give control to the car at highway speeds, although the driver will need to take over for lane-change and passing maneuvers. Finally, Ghosn highlighted Nissan’s new artificial-intelligence system, Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM), which is able to learn from the actions of the driver and apply these acquired techniques when the vehicle is in automated-driving mode.
Mexican Standoff
While Ghosn refrained from commenting on president-elect Donald Trump’s recent shots at General Motors and Toyota about manufacturing outside the United States, he was happy to discuss how his company will approach any changes the new administration makes, noting specifically that if NAFTA changes, then Nissan “will obviously adapt.” He added that carmakers as a whole are a pragmatic group and are willing to work with whatever may come from the new administration “on the condition that this is one rule for [every automaker].”
Nevertheless, as Reuters reported, Nissan has much to lose if the incoming administration imposes heavy tariffs on vehicles imported from Mexico. Mexico-built models currently make up approximately 25 percent of the brand’s U.S. sales. Citing JP Morgan estimates, Reuters noted that increasing tariffs on Nissan’s exports from Mexico to the United States could hurt the brand’s consolidated operating earnings by approximately 10 percent. Comparatively, Toyota’s earnings would take less than a 1 percent hit.
Daimler? I Just Met Her
Meanwhile, while confirming the truth of reports that Nissan has decided not to pursue a platform it co-developed with Daimler (maker of Mercedes-Benz cars), Ghosn said reports about problems with the pairing are greatly exaggerated. “The collaboration with Mercedes is going very well,” he said. “Obviously, because it is a development program, it will change. So, yes, we started with this one particular platform, and then we discovered that this platform was not the best [for us]. Every time we make a change in the project, it doesn’t mean that the project is condemned. It’s just that we try to optimize as much as possible for the consumer.”
Ghosn also, at Detroit, said that Nissan will continue developing small cars for the United States despite a rapidly shrinking market for such vehicles. He downplayed the effects that Nissan’s new ties with Mitsubishi will have on Nissan’s lineup—saying effectively that the relationship will result in no changes to Nissan’s product line, at least for the next five years.
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