Nissan pushes through developing smaller and lighter car batteries
Nissan Motor Company is looking intently into developing smaller and lighter car batteries said Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn in press conference held in Bangkok, Thailand on Wednesday.
Seeing the need for electric cars or green vehicles as well as for hybrids, Nissan and other automakers are neck-to-neck in creating viable lithium ion batteries, which are already being used in laptops and cellular phones. The tricky part is developing such lithium batteries that could actually handle the rigorous demands of a car engine.
With the alarming pollution caused by cars despite catalytic converters and higher fuel prices, The Brazilian-born Nissan CEO Ghosn believes that it is already time to invest in green technologies such as electric cars.
“We continue on the lithium ion battery. We think for us it’s a competitive advantage,” said Ghosn. “We have a lot of technology is this area, and we think this is going to be very helpful, not only for hybrids but also for electric cars.”
Nissan has stayed behind the heels of perennial rivals Toyota and Honda in developing hybrid vehicles. In the advent of environment friendly technologies in the automobile industry, Nissan has recently opened a new tech center in Japan. The maker of Frontier and Sentra believes that electric cars will not only help solve global warming, but could also be the answer for high fuel price in the market.
“If you have an efficient battery for a hybrid, why not go all the way and go for electric cars?” he asked. “It has zero emissions of anything.”
Although electric cars are friendlier to the environment and would save on fuel, these cars are rather expensive, difficult to recharge, and travel limited distance, automobile companies are still in the hunt for developing these. To answer these future problems, Nissan has been negotiating a deal to put a fleet of of electric cars in the Japanese market in cooperation with the local governments, which would need to provide necessary infrastructure such as charging stations.
It will take time before the actual cars will be produced, but the wait should be worth it.