Ghosn Kicks off LA Auto Show: Nissan CEO gives stirring keynote

The Los Angeles Auto Show opened for two days of press previews on Wednesday morning, with an irony, if not a bang. As dynamic Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was speaking to automotive journalists in the halls of the LA Convention Center, citing the crisis-borne demands on the global automobile industry, the CEOs from the Big Three American automakers were pleading with politicians in the Halls of Congress for cash to survive that crisis.

But the standing-room-only crowd for Carlos reflected a larger sense: As Ghosn intimated, from a mechanical standpoint, from a value standpoint, and from a price standpoint, there has never been a better time to buy a new car. The public's job insecurity (or job absence) is the bugaboo. It's the only bugaboo, but it's a Big Bugaboo. Last month was the worst October for car sales in nearly a quarter of a century.

Meanwhile, media interest in the LA Auto Show was at a peak. Double irony? Or irony and a paradox.

Electricity was the play of the day - from Ghosn's stirring introduction to the show vehicles. If a carmaker didn't have an electric car on display, whether production, concept or prototype - well, they must go by the name of Ferrari, or Bentley, or something like that.

Ghosn had spent Monday in Washington meeting with 100 CEOs, where they discussed the global business crisis, its "priorities, solutions, threats, and hopes about how things are and how things could be."

He stayed on theme for the automotive press. How are things?

"We're going to have to adapt and be very lucid and innovative, to get out of this slump," he said, applying the financial talk to carmaking. "Clearly, we're in uncharted territory."

Then he passed on some advice to carmakers, and to your family too: "Avoid burning cash until the storm passes."

Buying a new car - packed with content, technology, safety and efficiency at a lower-than-ever price - is not to be thought of as burning cash, he oddly failed to add.

And how could things be?

Well, for starters they could be worse. "There are 6.5 billion people on earth, and there are 600 million vehicles rolling on the planet," he said. "By 2050 there will be 13 billion people, and there may be 2.5 billion vehicles. If China catches up to America's level of consumption, we're going to need two planets."

How else could things be? Carlos has a dream.

If he has his way, 10 percent of the world's cars will be electric by 2020, and he plans for Nissan to lead the way. The push begins in 2010, he announced, with a partnership with Oregon, U.S.A.; Nissan will provide electric cars for the State's fleet.

"The future is now," said Governor Ted Kulongoski when he drove a test mule in Japan last week. "And it's in that automobile."

Said Ghosn, "This isn't a test program; it's the first step toward mass-marketing our first all-electric car."

Recognizing that battery obsolescence and disposal are the two big issues, he foresees that future Nissan electric customers will own the car but lease the battery. When a new battery is developed, the car-owner will simply trade in his old one; and Nissan will be responsible for the recycling or disposal.

But where will the electricity come from? Windmills, maybe? Issues like salmon, already lost to electricity production in Oregon's wild rivers, didn't come up. No one said it would be easy.

The journalists moved on, to the day's first two debuts: the Nissan Cube, a high-mileage box that out-cutes the Scion xB, and the all-new 332-horsepower Nissan 370Z, that has more to do with saving our spirits (if not our souls) than saving the planet. And which OnCars had driven for 500 wild miles the previous day. Read on, for those stories.