NISSAN’S ELECTRIC VEHICLE STRATEGY IN 2011: LEADING THE WAY TOWARD ZERO-EMISSION
You can’t ignore that zero-emission vehicles are the wave of the future. Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Renault-Nissan Alliance, January 12, 2010
INTRODUCTION It had been five months since Nissan sold its first all-electric vehicle, the Nissan LEAF, in Redwood City, California. Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of both Nissan and its Alliance partner Renault, was betting big on zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), to the tune of $5 billion, predicting they would be the wave of the future. The LEAF, a five-passenger compact car, could go up to 100 miles (US LA4 mode)1 on a single charge and could be fully recharged with a home charger in about seven hours, or 80 percent recharged in 30 minutes at a quick charging station. The LEAF‘s retail price was $32,780, and after the $7,500 federal tax credit the price dropped to $25,280 – less than the average price of a new car in the United States. 2 Many states had
Vehicles being tested under the United States‘ Federal Test Procedure were placed on a chassis dynamometer and were operated over a standardized driving cycle called the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), or "LA4 Cycle." This test involved duplicating a speed-time profile from an actual road route driven in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960's. This driving cycle was designed to be representative of a typical urban driving pattern. U.S. Department of Transportation. http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/clearinghouse/docs/airquality/wtaq/wtaq.pdf, pg. 31. 2 The National Automobile Dealers Association put the average price of a new 2010 car at about $28,400. Debra Schifrin and Professor Robert A. Burgelman prepared this case as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.
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