Editor’s Note: This is part one of an exclusive sit down I had with Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of their Global Zero Emission Business Unit, at last week’s U.S. debut of the LEAF in Los Angeles. Part two will be devoted battery leasing, part three to the quietness and safety of EVs, and part four to the different zero emissions directions of Renault and Nissan within their alliance.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance’s strategy regarding battery swapping has been somewhat unclear to the public as of late. On the one hand, Renault has partnered with battery swapping stars Better Place in Israel to develop a purpose built car for the Israeli battery swapping market. On the other hand, Nissan has largely ignored other battery swapping markets and has remained quite non-committal in those areas.

In a rather open conversation with me, Hideaki Watanabe, Nissan’s Division Manager of the Global Zero Emission Business Unit, explained why.

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Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn making remarks at the US unveiling of the Nissan LEAF.
(Photo: Nick Chambers)

Back on the campaign trail last year, President Obama set a goal of having 1 million plug-in hybrid and electric cars on US roads by 2015. Since the campaign promise, the Obama administration has made available billions of dollars for the development of plug-in hybrids, electric cars, and smart energy grids—mostly for the ultimate goal of actually reaching 1 million plug-ins on the road by 2015.

Last Friday, at the Los Angeles unveiling of the upcoming Nissan LEAF electric car, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn indicated that the president’s goal of 1 million electric cars was quite obtainable, in fact he said that number will be easily surpassed.

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In Los Angeles this morning, at the United States unveiling of the Nissan LEAF electric car—set to hit showrooms in late 2010—Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was enthusiastic and clearly proud of the position the Nissan-Renault Alliance has taken as a leader in the development of electric cars and charging infrastructure.

“The LEAF is a new paradigm of the car,” said Ghosn. “LEAF represents a totally new transformational technology that will change the way people drive, use, and power their vehicles. And the time is right for this breakthrough.”

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According to two unnamed sources as reported in the Guardian—one current International Energy Agency (IEA) employee and one former—the IEA has been purposely painting an overly rosy picture of the remaining available world oil supplies to avoid panicking the public. Apparently this obfuscation has been a result of heavy pressure from the United States.

As one whistleblower put it, “Many inside the [IEA] believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.”

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In what could be a major breakthrough, Joule Biotechnologies announced that it has directly produced fuel from the plentiful carbon dioxide in the air around us using highly engineered photosynthetic microbes.

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