Carlos Ghosn’s assertion that “...electric vehicles could represent 10% of the global market in the next ten years, or 6 million vehicles…” may no longer be en vogue over at Renault, at least according to French business paper La Tribune.
The paper claims that Ghosn added a qualifier to this claim during a presentation to discuss Renault’s latest financial results. Regarding the 10 percent claims, Ghosn cautioned that “this will be the case where the vehicles will be sold…“, suggesting that the volumes would be restricted to certain markets, rather than globally.
Ironically, the remarks come as the Leaf celebrated 50,000 units globally – a nice milestone for Nissan, but still rather small numbers in the grand scheme of things. Ghosn is of course, still bullish on EV prospects, but it appears as if some of the juice has been drained from those particular batteries.
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Headline amended!
I hate to have to point this out, but the definition of “could” implies the possibility of a different outcome. Had he said “will”, then you might have a point.
You are correct, grammatically. Let’s wait and see how soon “could” evolves to “will”.
I like my Leaf, but there’s no way EVs will sell in those quantities worldwide.
Heck, EVs only make up 1/3 of my household cars.
Just as “could” is a qualifier, “represent 10% of the global market” is a quantity qualifier, not that the EVs would actually be sold globally. As far as expert status in making qualified statements is concerned, Ghosn is a qualifier!
Renault Nissan has for a long time had the ‘this will be the case where the vehicle is sold’ part for their 2020 forecast. And it tended to accompany a statement listing countries with incentives for EVs (typically including China, USA, Jpn, some EU countries). The implication being that if a government didn’t deem fit to provide some form of incentive then they would miss out on being part of high EV count. Pushed further Renault/Nissan would then describe Brazil as the type of country that would not get 10% EVs.
What has changed is that Renault/Nissan is now including PHEVs into the 10% target. But its obvious that the industry has collectively decided to seriously compete with the GM Volt, but produce only compliance EVs to compete with LEAF/ZOE.
The other thing when Ghosn announced that 10% of car would be electric by 2020, no other automotive authority had an equivalent number, Recently Lutz has started also that 10% of car would be electric by 2020.